Ventus

14

...We shall win new feelings, superior to love and loyalty, from the field of the human heart.

General Lavin put down the book, and rubbed his eyes. It was late. He should be sleeping, but instead he kept returning to these damnable pages, to stare at words written both by a familiar hand, and an alien mind.

Distant sounds of crackling fires, canvas flapping and quiet grumbled conversation reassured him. His army sprawled around him, thousands of men asleep or, like him, uneasy in darkness. Lavin felt a tension in the air; the men knew they were close to battle, and while no one was happy, they were at least satisfied that waiting would soon be over.

He had closed the book four times this evening, and every time began pacing the narrow confines of his tent until, drawn equally by loathing and hope, he returned to it. The things Queen Galas said in this, a collection of private letters liberated from one of her experimental towns, were worse than heresies—they attacked basic human decency. Yet, Lavin's memories of her from Court were so strong, and so at odds with the picture these writings suggested, that he was half-convinced they were someone else's, attributed to her.

This was the hope that kept him returning to the book—that he would discover some proof in the writing that these were not the writings of the queen of Iapysia. He wanted to believe she was isolated, perhaps even imprisoned in her palace, and that some other, evil cabal was running the country.

But the turns of phrase, the uncanny self-assurance of the voice that spoke in this pages; they were undeniably hers.

He sighed, and sat down in a folding camp chair. He was having more nights like this, as the siege lengthened and Galas continued to refuse to surrender. The strain was showing in his face. In the lamplit mirror his eyes were hollows, and lines stood out around his mouth. Those lines had not been there last summer.

Some kind of discussion broke out in front of his tent. Lavin frowned at the tent flap. They'd wake the dead with those voices. He cared for his men, but sometimes they behaved like barbarians.

"Sir? Sorry to disturb you sir."

"Enter." The flap flipped aside and Colonel Hesty entered. The colonel wore riding gear, and his collar was open to the autumn air. He looked haggard. Lavin tried to take some satisfaction in that: he was not the only one who found it hard to sleep tonight.

"What is it?" Lavin did not make to rise, nor did he offer Hesty a seat. He realized he had spoken in a certain upper class drawl he was usually at pains to disguise from his men. They seemed to think it was effete. With a grimace, he sat up straighter.

"They've found something. Over in the quarry." Something in the way he said it caught Lavin's full attention.

"What do you mean, 'found something'? A spy?"

Hesty shook his head. "No. Not... a man. Well, sort of a man."

Lavin rolled his head slowly and was rewarded as his neck cracked. "I know it's late, Hesty, and one's vocabulary becomes strained at such times. But could you expand on that a little?" He reached for his coat, which he had carelessly slung across the back of a chair.

Hesty raised one eyebrow. "It's hard to explain, sir. I'd rather show you." He was almost smiling.

Lavin joined him outside. The air was cool, but not yet cold. Autumn came late and gently on the edge of the desert; south, in the heart of the land, it never came at all.

South and west lay the experimental towns, now mostly razed. Flashes of memory came unbidden to Lavin, and he suppressed them with a shudder. "It's hard to sleep, now that we're so close," he said.

Hesty nodded. "Myself as well. That's why I think a little mystery might do you some good. I mean, a different kind of mystery."

"Does this have to do with the queen?"

"No. At least, only very indirectly. Come." Hesty grinned and gestured at two horses who waited patiently nearby.

Lavin shook his head, but mounted up. He could see the palace over the peak of the tent. Looking away from that, he tried to find the path to the quarry. The valley was a sea of tents, some lit by the faint glow of fires. Columns of grey smoke rose from the sea and disappeared among the stars.

Hesty led. Lavin watched his back swaying atop the horse, and mused about sleep. Some nights he struggled with exhaustion like an enemy, and got nowhere. Maybe Hesty did the same thing, a surprising thought; Lavin respected the man, would even be a bit afraid of him were their positions not so firmly established, he the leader, Hesty the executor. After one battle, he remembered, Hesty's sword arm had been drenched in blood. Lavin had killed a man himself, and felt proud and ashamed, as one does, until he saw Hesty. Hesty had been grim, his mind bent to the task of securing the town—unconcerned with himself. There was a lesson in that.

It was possible the man was acting that way now—simply doing his duty to try to ensure a night's distraction for his commanding officer. Lavin smiled. It might work, too. Sometimes the only way to win the struggle with insomnia was to let it carry you for a while—ride it like he rode this horse.

As they left the camp, he found his thoughts drifting. The movement of the horse lulled him, though it was a hard rocking from side to side, never subtle, not swaying the body like a dancer swayed. Which made him think of dancers; how long had it been since he had attended a dance? Months. Years? Couldn't be. No one seemed to host them anymore. None like the one where he had first seen Princess Galas, anyway. It wasn't hard to believe that was twenty years ago—easier to believe it was a hundred.

Swaying was how he had first seen her. She was finishing a dance. At that time she could have been no more than seventeen, a year or two younger than himself. He had stood in a corner with some friends, plucking at his collar. They had all craned their necks to try to locate this storied mad princess in the moving maze of dancing couples. When she did appear it was very nearby, as the song broke up—she curtsied, laughing to her older partner. He bowed, and she spoke to him briefly. They drifted apart as the next dance began.

She stood nearby, miraculously alone. This baron's hall held easily a thousand people, and all had to meet her, or be seen to try for etiquette's sake. Her father's spies would know who did and did not pay her compliments. She, like any princess, was a vessel for his favor. Lavin saw her sigh now, and close her eyes briefly. She wants to recover her poise, he thought.

His friends huddled together. "Let's meet her!" "Lavin, shall we?"

"We shall not!" He said it a bit too loudly, and she looked up, her eyes widening just a bit. For the first time Lavin had realized she might have come to rest here because his was the only group of people at the ball near her own age. Everyone else was middle-aged or older, a fact that had been making Lavin's group squirm.

So he smiled, and bowed to her, and said, "We shall not meet the princess. If she wishes, the princess will meet us."

She smiled. Galas was willowy, with large dark eyes and a determined thrust to her chin. She held herself well in her formal ball dress; Lavin envied her such poise. But she was of royal blood, after all. He was merely noble.

His companions had frozen like rabbits caught in a garden. Lavin was about to step forward, say something else ingenuous (although he seemed to have exhausted his cleverness with that one statement) when suddenly Galas was surrounded by courtiers. They had rushed, without seeming to rush, around the edge of the dance floor, and homed in on her like falcons.

Galas became caught in a tangle of clever opening lines. They led her, without seeming to lead her, away to the lunch tables. Lavin stared after her, not heeding decorum.

When they had almost reached the tables, she turned and glanced back. At him.

He would always remember that moment, how happy he had been. Something had begun.

Harsh shouts ahead. Lavin opened his eyes. Hesty had led them to a deep gash in one of the hills near the city. Here, under the lurid light of bonfires, gangs of prisoners labored through the night to create missiles for their steam cannon.

Lavin and Hesty dismounted, and the colonel led him into the pit, where captured royalists cursed and wept on the stones they were chiseling, while Lavin's men whipped them.

Over the years workers had taken a large bite out of the hillside. The layers below proved to be made of salt. Lavin had not been here before, and he marveled at the cleanness of the carved walls. In daylight they would probably glow white. The whole place stank of ocean-side. The scent made him smile.

The salt was precious, and the entire site was under guard because his men wanted to walk off with the stuff. They had tried quarrying for proper stone but it was a good distance underground. Lavin wanted a heap of rock the size of a house near his cannon when it came time to fire on the city. The salt was available; precious or not, he would use it. His men could collect the shards off the street later and buy their own rewards with it. Lavin couldn't buy what he wanted, so he was indifferent to its lure.

"It's over here!" One of the overseers waved at them from across the pit. A large crowd had gathered there, numbering both soldiers. The prisoners showed no fear, but glanced up at Lavin with frank eyes as he strode past. Their attitude made him uncomfortable—they were her creations, and he didn't understand them.

"Sir!" The overseer saluted hastily. His broad belly gleamed with sweat in the torchlight. He stood over a large slab of white salt, perhaps twice the length and width of a man, and at least half a meter thick. Two brawny soldiers were brushing delicately at its surface with paint brushes.

Lavin cocked his head skeptically, and looked at Hesty and then the overseer. "You got me up in the middle of the night for this?"

"Sir. Look!" The overseer pointed. Lavin stepped up to the slab.

There was a man buried in it. The outline of a man, anyway, blurred and distorted, visible through the pale milky crystal crystals. Lavin stepped back in shock, then moved in again, repelled but fascinated.

"Where..."

"The whole slab came off the face over there," the overseer pointed, "about two hours ago. Killed the man it fell on. When they went to get him they thought he'd climbed out and died on top of the thing—they saw the outline, see? But his leg was sticking out from underneath." He laughed richly. "Three legs was a bit unlikely, eh. So they looked closer. Then they called me. And..." he seemed to run out of steam, "I called the colonel."

Hesty traced the outline of the figure with his fingertip. "We have the quarry foreman. He thinks the layers we're working in were laid down eight hundred years ago, by the desals."

Lavin lifted whitened fingers to his face. The sea. "So at that time, this area was a salt flat? How then did it become hilly?"

"Mostly runoff, but this is more of an underground salt mountain than a flat. Otherwise the whole area for kilometers would be mined. But sir: look at this."

Below, and a little to the right of the body, a dark line transected the crystal block. "What is it?"

The soldier, Lavin saw, wore some kind of uniform. He could make out the bandoliers. And poking over his shoulder was, unmistakably, the barrel of a musket.

Lavin caught his breath. Muskets were the property of the royal guard. Always had been, as far as he knew... and he was right. Even so many generations ago, Iapysia had been exactly as it was when Lavin was a boy. And then came Galas, to break all the ancient traditions and bring her people to ruin.

Something else glinted in the torchlight. He bent closer to examine what might be the soldier's hand. "More light. Bring some hurricane lanterns here. I want to see it." People hurried to obey. Lavin heard Hesty chuckle behind him.

Yes, your distraction worked, Hesty, he thought. Be smug about it if you want.

When they had brought the lanterns Lavin took another good look. He was right: preserved in the salt, wrapped around the withered finger of the soldier, was a silver ring.

He stood back, knuckled his eyes and was rewarded by a salty sting. "I want that."

"Sir?..."

"The ring. Get it off the corpse. Bring it to me." He blinked around at the men. They looked uniformly uncomfortable.

"I'm not grave-robbing. We'll return it to him after the siege, and accord him full honors as a member of the king's guard when we inter him. But this ring is a powerful symbol of the continuity of the dynasty. Think about it. I want it on my hand when I ride into battle."

With that he turned away to remount his horse.

Back in his tent he prepared for bed. Something told him he would sleep this time. His lamp still burned above the camp table, and as he bundled his shirt to use as a pillow, his eye was drawn to Galas' book, which still sat open to the passage he had read earlier.

Lavin marveled that he had been so mesmerized by the words. Now, the book beckoned again, and he wondered if Hesty's distraction had been enough to break the spell it had cast over him. He hesitated; then, when he realized he was acting like he was afraid of the thing, he stalked over quickly and bent to read:

An ancient sage held that in different ages, humans held the senses in different ratios, according to the media by which they communicated and expressed themselves. Hence before writing, the ear was the royal sense. After writing, the eye.

We say that similar ratios pertain between emotions. Each civilization has its royal affect, and its ignored or forgotten feelings. Or rather—there are no distinct emotions. You have learned that in the human heart, love resides within such and such a circle, hate there in another, and between are pride, jealousy, all the royal and plebeian emotions. We say instead emotion is one unbounded field. Our way of life causes us to cross this field, now in one direction, now another, again and again on our way to the goals to which our world has constrained us. The paths crisscross, and eventually the field has well-travelled intersections, and blank areas where we have never walked.

We name the intersections just as we do towns but not the empty fields between them. We name these oft-crossed places love, hate, jealousy, pride. But our destinations were made by the conditions of our lives, they are not eternal or inevitable.

We know that the answer to human suffering lies in changing the ratio of emotions so grief and sorrow lie neglected, even nameless, in an untraveled wild.

The task of a Queen is to rule a people truly. The task of the Queen of Queens is to rule Truth itself. We know that the highest act of creation is to create new emotions, superior to those which, unguided, have fallen to us from Nature. And this We shall do.

As We have won new fields and towns from Nature, We shall win new feelings, superior to love and loyalty, from the field of the human heart.

Lavin closed the book.

Hesty had done him more of a favour than he might know. Despite all he knew about the queen's excesses, and even after all the atrocity and hatred he had seen during the war, Lavin still had his doubts. She had been his queen... and more.

The night stars and the rounded hills reminded him now of permanence. Thinking of the ancient soldier they had found, he remembered that those same stars had gazed down upon his ancestors, and they would smile on his descendents, who because of him would speak the same tongue, and live their lives as he would prefer to live his. Things would again be as they once had been. He had to believe that.

A messenger coughed politely at the flap of the tent. Lavin took a small cloth bundle from him, and unfolded it to reveal the soldier's ring. It was shaped like a carven wreath, the tiny flowers still embedded with salt crystals like dull jewels. He sat on his cot for a long while, turning it over and over in his hands.

Then he put it on, and blew out the light. He felt calm for the first time in days. As he drifted off to sleep, Lavin felt his confidence return, flowing from the immeasurable weight of the ages lying heavy in his hand.

Below and behind them, a horse nickered in the dark. Armiger glanced back—though Megan could not fathom how he could see anything in that shadowed hollow. Their horses were no doubt safe, but Armiger had to assure himself of everything.

They crouched on a hilltop overlooking the besieged summer palace of the queen of Iapysia. The palace was dark, a blot of towers against the sky, sinuous walls hugging the earth. The pinprick sparks of campfires surrounded the city on all sides. Thousands of men waited in the darkness below this hill, and Armiger had earlier pointed out pickets on the surrounding hills as well. This hill's sentry watched the palace a hundred meters below the spot where Armiger and Megan hid.

"I count ten thousand," Armiger said. He squirmed forward through the sand, obviously enjoying himself. Megan sat back, brushing moist grit from the cloak she sat on.

"It's sandy here," she said.

"We're right on the edge of the desert," Armiger said absently. He cocked his head to look at the hills to either side.

"Who would build a city in a desert?"

"The desals flood the desert every spring," he said. "The Iapysians seed it in anticipation of the event, and harvest what comes out. The desals are using the desert as a salt trap, and don't really mind if the humans introduce life there. It probably saves them some trouble, in fact. A good arrangement, so Iapysia has thrived for centuries."

"Then why's it all coming apart?" She tried again to count the fires, but they flickered so much she quickly lost track.

"Galas."

There was that name again. It seemed a name to conjure by. If she breathed it too loudly, would those ten thousand men stand as one? Ten thousand hostile gazes turn on her? The queen was bottled up in that palace down there, and in days or hours they were going to storm its walls and kill her. Megan mouthed the name, but nothing seemed to happen.

"Is it rescue you are planning?" she asked. "What will you do, ride in and ask for her? `Pardon me, coming through, would you hand me the queen, please.'" She smiled.

"Rescue? No, I'm sure she'll die when they take the place."

"Then why are we here?"

"Not so loud."

"Excuse me." She placed a finger over her mouth, and whispered past it, "Why are we here?"

Armiger sighed. "I just want to speak to her."

"Before or after they kill her?"

"They have the palace well surrounded," he said. "Withal, I'm sure I could reach the walls; after all, they're watching for the approach of a large armed force, or for sallies from inside. The trouble is, how to get inside."

"Once you're there?"

He rolled over to look at her. It was too dark to see, but she pictured a puzzled expression on his face. "Why do you want to get into the palace?"

"You are an inconsiderate lout."

"What?"

"You're going to leave me here where the soldiers can find me?"

"Ah." He stared into the sky for a moment. "Perhaps you had better come with me, then."

Megan growled her frustration and stood. She grabbed up her cloak and stalked down the hill. After a moment she heard him following.

Armiger was without a doubt the most insensitive man she had ever known. She tried to forgive him, because he wasn't an ordinary person—but she had always assumed the Winds were better than people. Armiger, strange morph that he was, was worse much of the time.

Men, after all, were usually wrapped up in their own schemes, and thought about the things that mattered rarely if at all. She was used to having to prod them into remembering the basic duties of life. Armiger, though! On the day she took him in, Megan had taken on a responsibility and burden greater than any woman should have to bear. For it quickly became evident that Armiger was not really a man. He was a spirit, perhaps a Wind, one of the creators of the world.

Many times during the week-long ride here, he had gone from seeming abstracted to being totally oblivious to the world. He had leaned in the saddle, eyes blank, slack-jawed. This sort of thing terrified her. He forgot to eat, forgot to let the horses rest. She had to do his thinking for him.

Megan had come to understand that Armiger needed his body as an anchor. Without it, his soul would drift away into some abstraction of rage. She had to remind him of it constantly, be his nurse, cook, mother, and concubine. When he rediscovered himself—literally coming to his senses—he displayed tremendous passion and knowledge, uncanny perception and even, yes, sensitivity. He was a wonderful lover, the act never became routine for him. And he was grateful to her for her devotion.

But, oh, the work she had to do to get to that point! It was almost too much to bear.

She had thrown her lot in with him, and this was still infinitely better than the loneliness of rural widowhood she had left. Fuming about him was an improvement over brooding about herself or the past. He was coming to appreciate her, and the vast walls of his self-possession were starting to crumble. She was proud that she was making the difference to him.

Surprisingly, she felt jealous of this queen, as if the great lady might steal her mysterious soldier. Well; anyone could be stolen, and as likely by a peasant as a princess. She found herself frowning, and resolutely pushed the thought away.

She reached the horses and murmured reassurances to them. They had lit no fire tonight, and the darkness was unsettling. Megan was used to the presence of trees, but they had seen the last of the forest days ago. She felt naked amongst all this yellow, damp grass.

She heard him coming up behind her, and smiled as she turned. Armiger was black moving on black, his head an absence of stars.

"We need help from inside. We have to get a message to the queen," he said.

Megan crossed her arms skeptically. She knew he could see her. She just looked at him, saying nothing.

"There is a way," he said. "It will weaken me."

"What do you mean?" She reached quickly to touch his arm.

"I can send a messenger," he said. "It will take some of my... life force, if you will, with it. With luck, we can recover that later. If not, I will take some time to heal."

"So my careful nursing is being thrown out with the dish water? I don't understand! Why is this so important? What can she give you that matters? She's doomed, and her kingdom too."

He stepped into her embrace, and smoothed his hands down her back awkwardly. Armiger was still not very good at reassurance.

"She is the only human being on Ventus who has some inkling of what the Winds really are," he said. "She has spent her reign defying them, and I believe she has asked questions, and received answers, that no one else has thought of. She may have the key to what I am seeking."

"Which is?"

He didn't answer, which was no less than she had expected. Armiger had some purpose beyond any he had told her about. For some reason he didn't trust her with it, which hurt. If it were something that would take him away from her, she should worry, but Megan was sure that as long as he could hold her, his other purposes mattered little. She closed her eyes and clung to him tightly for a while.

"What do you have to do?" she asked when she finally let go.

"Will you keep watch for me? This will take all my concentration."

"All right."

He sat down and vanished in the shadow.

"I can't see. How can I keep watch?"

He didn't answer.

For a while Megan moved about, fighting her own exhaustion and worrying about what he was up to. She stood and stared up the stars for a long time, remembering how she had done that as a child. The constellations had names, she knew, and everyone knew the obvious ones: the plowman, the spear. Others she was not so sure of. Her brother would know, but she had not seen him in years; he had never left their parents' village, and lived there still with his unfriendly wife and four demanding, incurious children.

How strange to be here. She repressed an urge to skip and laugh at the strange turns life took. The day when she found Armiger half-dead on the path near her cottage had started just like any other. Before she knew it, she was nurse to a wounded, emaciated soldier, listening to him rave in the night about the Winds and gods... and three days later she awoke in awe to the fact that he was so much more than a soldier, more than a man.

And he had let her come with him. They were, at least for now, a couple. It was as though she were suddenly living someone else's life. She shook her head in wonder.

A gleam of red in one of the horse's eyes brought her attention back to ground level. At first she thought Armiger had lit a fire, but the glow was too small and faint for that. She went over to him and crouched down.

Armiger sat cross-legged, his eyes closed. His hands were cupped together in front of him, and the glow came from between his fingers.

Seeing this, Megan stood and backed away. "Don't", she whispered. "Please. You're still too weak."

He made no move. The glow intensified, and then slowly faded away. When it was completely gone, he stood up, hands still cupped. Then in a quick motion he flung his arms up and wide, and brought them down again loosely. His shoulders slumped.

"There," he said. "Now we wait."

"What have you done?" She took one of his hands. The skin felt hot, and there were long bloodless cuts in his palms.

"I have called the queen," said Armiger. "Now we will see if she answers."

15

Galas waited in her garden. It was a cool night, the air laden with water after evening thunderstorms. Their clouds still mounted up one horizon, giant wings lit by occasional flickers of lightning. The rest of the sky was clear, and stars were thrown across it in random swatches. The moon had not yet risen, but the night flowers were opening all around her, giant purple and blue mouths appearing from dense hedges that ringed deep pools. The garden was made around its pools, each one isolated by some artifice of growth so that it seemed a world unto itself, and a thousand years of tradition had dictated as many rules for its seeming disarray as the Queen had for her court.

She had decided to pause beside a long rectangular pool. Diadem, the moon, would rise directly above this pool tonight; that was what this pool was for, to catch the rays of its light on this and the following two nights of the year, to prove that harvest time was over. Throughout the rest of the year it was tended carefully by men and women whose lives were dedicated to the garden, but who would never see this nocturnal vision. All the night flowers would bow to Diadem, all transformed at the critical moment into a magical court, the queen herself its centerpiece. She loved this pool, and this garden, as few other places in her land.

She pulled her shift around her and delicately sat on the stone bench that was hers and hers alone to sit upon. Her maids had woven diamonds into her pale hair, in anticipation of the lunar light; her shift was purest white, belted with onyx squares, and she carried in her right hand her short staff of office, carved of green jade.

Queen Galas smiled at the placid water. Total silence blanketed the garden. She knew quite well that Lavin was encamped within sight of the garden walls, but he was forbidden to attack on this and the next two nights by ancient custom more strict than law. It was the Autumn Affirmation and war was forbidden for its duration. It was a fine irony, she thought, that she should have this time to prepare for his coming. She smiled at the pool's beauty. Aware as she was that death and ruin lay in wait outside her gates, she marveled that such peace should maintain itself within.

"Flowers will grow on your grave too," she said to herself. "The moon also smiles on slaves and cripples."

The smile broke, and she lowered her eyes.

For a long time she sat like that. When she looked up again, Diadem was fully visible, like a brilliant jewel held aloft by the arms of carefully tended trees. Its reflection came slowly down the water towards her, lighting up the curves of bole and stem and creating that lovely illusion of animation that happened only once every year. She had missed the beginning of the event. She frowned a chastisement to herself and sat up straighter.

But a flaw had appeared in the full whiteness of the moon. She stood up quickly, as it resolved into a giant black night moth, two hand-spans across, of the sort that inhabited the mountains many days east of the palace. It dropped from the moon and fluttered across the surface of the pool, directly to Queen Galas. It paused in the air before her.

She sat down. "What do you want, little one?"

It dipped down, then up, and then appearing to gather its courage, landed on her knee. She had never feared insects, and sat admiring it, trying to pretend it was some sort of omen. That was no good, though—she was well past the stage where omens could tell her anything she didn't know. Lavin was coming; nothing would change that.

The moth beat its wings, but didn't rise. Suddenly it seemed to sprout another pair of wings, and then it gave one flap and... unfolded.

She blinked at the single sheet of paper that now lay on her lap.

Galas' fingers trembled as she reached to touch it. The sheet was square, smooth and dry, and slightly warm. Writing was faintly visible on it.

The skin of her neck crawled. She had never seen anything like this, never heard of such an occurrence. The morphs could change animals, she knew, but they didn't understand writing. Could this be a message from some new Wind, whom she had never met? Or had the desals, the Winds who had helped her take the throne, decided to intervene again in her life?

She picked up the letter by one corner, and turned it to the moonlight. She read.

May I humbly beseech Queen Galas, wife of this world, to grant an audience to a traveller? For I have not rested on green earth since before the ancient stones of your palace were laid, nor have I spoken to a kindred soul since before your language, oh Queen, was born.

I came as a falling star down your sky, and now feel again what it is to breathe. I would speak to one such as myself, whose eyes encompass this whole world, for I am lonely and own a question even the heavens cannot answer.

Signed: Maut.

Below this was another line of text. She read it and shook her head in wonder. Here were clear instructions as to how she could meet this being who had written her. Meet him or her tonight.

Galas looked up, wondering if she would catch sight of a trail of light across the skies. She looked at the paper in her hand. Of course I will speak with you.

She restrained an urge to leap from the bench and race inside. Who could she tell? Her heart was thudding and she was suddenly lightheaded. She buried her face in her hands for a moment. She breathed faint rain-scent from the paper she still held.

Galas commanded herself to become calm. She turned her attention back to the pool. All along its edge now waited handsome and graceful courtiers, fair and clothed in dewdrops and ivy. The garden's plants were cultivated just so they would appear this way for a few moments on this night. Ever since she was a girl, she had marveled at the human ingenuity that could create such art, and in the past the sight had served to strengthen her resolve to cultivate her land as though it too were a garden.

The shadowy figures all faced towards the rising moon, and the pool appeared like a flow of glass between them, a mirrored way down which Diadem's reflection moved to meet her.

This contemplation was uplifting, but sad this time. She imagined the faces of her real courtiers on these ephemeral shapes, and fancied herself the reflection of the moon. All brief, a mere shadow play soon to be ended by the blades and guns of the insolent general waiting outside. One shadow overtaking another.

Fear surged in her, and she closed her eyes. Stop, she told herself. I am not the reflection. "I am Diadem herself. All things take their light from me." Even the general who comes to kill me.

She looked down at the paper, and laughed a little giddily.

Then she stood to go inside.

The room where she chose to wait was really an old air shaft constructed to cool the Hart Manor, which was the center of the palace. Originally several other floors had openings onto the shaft, but some paranoid ancestor had walled them off. Galas had discovered the place as a girl, but it had gained new, symbolic significance for her after the desals placed her on the throne.

She came here sometimes to pace the three-by-three meter square floor, or scrawl insults on the walls, or scream at the clouds framed by tan brickwork far overhead. She had torn her clothes here, and wept, and done all manner of unmentionable things. Now she lay on her back, and stared at the stars.

Her visitor should be approaching the walls now. Its instructions had been simple: let down a rope at the centerpoint of the southern battlement, and be ready to pull. She had wanted to meet it there herself, and even now her hands pressed against the cool stone underneath her, eager to push her to her feet. But whatever happened she must not blunder out like a gauche ingenue. If this was a Wind coming to see her, she must meet it as an equal. She would wait.

But she wasn't dressed for this! With a groan she stood and left the shaft. One of her maids curtsied outside. Galas waved at her. "Our black gown. The velvet one. Be prompt!" The girl curtsied again and raced away.

Galas entered the shaft again and closed the stout door she'd had made for it. "Why now?" she said.

She kicked the door with her heel. "I'm almost dead! A day, two days." Crossing her arms, she walked around the room. "Bastards! You strung me up, after putting me here in the first place!"

Well, it's not like I haven't done everything in my power to disobey the Winds, she reminded herself.

She'd been wracked with tension for weeks now; so had everyone here. Her courtiers and servants were true Iapysians, and had no idea how to discharge such emotions. Galas showed them by example: she laughed, she cried, she paced and shouted, and whenever it came time to make a decision, she was cool and acted correctly.

But it was all too late. Lavin had come to kill her—of all people, why him? She had loved him! They might have been married, had not an entire maze of watchful courtiers and ancient protocols stood between them. She wondered, not for the first time, if this was his way of finally possessing her. She grimaced at the irony.

"Come on, come on." She hurried back to the door. Ah, here came the maids, bearing gown and jewel box.

"Come in here." They hesitated; no one but her ever entered this place. She was sure all manner of legends had grown up about it. "Come! There's nothing will bite you here."

The three women crowded in with her. "Dress me!" She held her arms out. They fell to their task, but their eyes kept moving, trying to make sense of what they saw. Galas sometimes spent whole nights in this place. She often emerged with new ideas or solid decisions in hand. The queen knew, from faint scratches around the hinges of the door, that at least one person had given in to curiosity and broken in. She imagined they had reacted much as these women to discover there was nothing here—no secret stairway, no magic books, not even a chair or a candle. Only a little dirt in the corners, and the sky for a ceiling.

They had wondered about Galas her whole life. Let them wonder a little more.

"Has the guest suite been prepared?" she asked.

"Yes, your majesty."

"How are the supplies holding out?"

"Well enough, they say."

"Reward the soldiers who bring our guest over the walls. Give them each a double ration. Also convey our thanks."

"Yes, your majesty. ...Ma'am?"

"Yes, what is it? Bring me a mirror."

"Who is this person? A spy of some sort?"

"A messenger," she said brusquely. Satisfied with her appearance, she gathered her skirts and swept from the chamber. They followed, casting final glances about the shaft.

Out of a sense of devilment, Galas decided to leave the door open—the first time ever. She hid a smile as she paced toward the audience hall.

As a girl she had made up stories about the figures painted on the audience hall's ceiling. Later she learned the struggling, extravagantly posed men and women were all allegories for historical events. By then it was too late; she knew the woman directly above the throne as the Smitten Dancer, not as an idealized Queen Delina. The two men wrestling on the clouds near the west window were the Secret Lovers to her, not King Andalus overthrowing the False Regent. Every time she entered this room she glanced up and smiled at her pantheon, and she knew that those observing her assumed she was drawing strength from her family's history, and knowing that made her smile again.

She composed herself on the throne and waited. When had she had a visitor who had not closely studied the history of Iapysia? If this stranger was truly from the heavens, would he know whom the frescoes represented? Or would he be in the same state of innocence as she when she wrote her own mythology on them?

Or would he know all histories, the way that the desals had? She scowled, and sat up straighter.

The doorman straightened. He looked tired and confused, having been ousted out of bed for this one moment. "Your majesty..." He read the card he had been given with obvious puzzlement. "The lord Maut, and lady Megan."

Maut? Megan stopped in her tracks. "What name is this?" she hissed at him.

"My name," Armiger said simply. "One of them, anyway." He smiled and strode into the vast, lamp-lit chamber as if he owned it.

Galas restrained an urge to stand. Now that he stood before her, she had no idea what she'd been expecting. This was no monster, nor by appearances a god.

He seemed mature, perhaps in his early forties, his hair long and braided down his right shoulder, his face finely carved with a high brow and straight nose, and a strong mouth. He was a little taller than she, and was dressed in dusty travelling clothes, with soft riding boots on his feet, an empty scabbard belted at his waist. As he paused four meters below the throne, she saw the light traceries of character around his eyes and mouth, indications of both humor and weariness.

Behind him, like a shadow, stood a peasant woman. Her face shone with a mixture of timidity and defiance. As Maut bowed, she curtsied deeply, but when she raised her eyes she looked Galas in the eye. There was no hostility there, nor respect; only, it seemed, unselfconscious curiosity. Galas liked her immediately.

Galas held up the folded letter. "Do you know what this says?" she asked the man.

He bowed again. "I do," he said. His voice was rich and deep, quite compelling. He gave a quick smile. "May I humbly beseech Queen Galas, wife of this world, to grant an audience to a traveller? For I have not rested on green earth since before the ancient stones of your palace were laid, nor have I spoken to a kindred soul since before your language, oh Queen, was born."

Galas saw the woman Megan start and stare at Maut as he spoke. Interesting.

"What are you?" she asked. "And—maybe more germaine—why do you speak of me as a kindred soul?"

Maut shrugged. "As to what I am—you have no words for it. I am not a man, despite appearances—"

"What proof do you have of that?"

For a moment he looked angry at her interruption. Then he appeared to consider what she had said. "My moth was unconvincing?"

"There are people who make a life's work of tricking others, Maut. Your moth was highly convincing—but just because something is convincing, that does not make it true. It is merely convincing."

He waved a hand dismissively. "It cost me energy to perform that minor miracle. I have very little to spare, and no time to recover any I lose now."

Galas leaned back. She felt betrayed, and suddenly cynical. "So you have no more tricks? Is that what you're saying?"

"I am not a trick pony!"

"And I am not a fool!"

They glared at one another. Then Galas noticed that the woman Megan was covering a smile with her hand.

Galas forced a grim smile of her own. "You know our situation. This is not the time for frippery, or lies. Is it so strange that I demand proof?"

Grudgingly, he shook his head. "Forgive me, Queen Galas. I am much reduced from my former station, and that makes me tactless and short-tempered."

"But unafraid," she said. "You are not afraid of me."

"He is not afraid of anything," said Maut's companion. Her tone was not boasting—in fact it was perhaps a little apologetic. Or resigned.

Maut shrugged again. "It seems we've gotten off to a bad start. I am very weary—too weary for miracles. But I am what I say I am."

"But, you have not said what that is!"

He frowned. "There is an ancient word in your language. It is not much used today. The word is god. I am—or was, a god. I wish to be so again, and so I have come to you because, of all the humans on Ventus, you are the only one who has caught a glimpse of the inner workings of the world. You may have the knowledge I need to become what I once was."

"Intriguing," said Galas. It was still unbelievable, on the face of it. But... her fingers caressed the letter in her lap. She had seen what she had seen.

As to his flattery—well, she knew, as an absolute certainty, that no one in the world had the knowledge she held. It was perhaps slightly charming that he recognized it.

"And why should I tell you what you wish to know—even assuming that I have the knowledge you need?"

Maut put his hands behind his back. He seemed to be restraining an urge to pace. "You have looked up at the sky," he said. "All humans have done that, at one time or another. And you have asked questions.

"You want to interrogate the sky. And you of all people, Queen Galas, would interrogate nature itself, everything that is other, in your human search for understanding. Everything you have ever done proves this. You are human, Galas, and your madness is very human: you wish to hear human speech issue from the inhuman, from the rocks and trees. Could a stone speak, what would it say? Your kind has ever invented gods, and governments, and categories and even the sexes themselves as means of interrogating that otherness.

"That the world should speak, as you speak! What a desire that is. It informs every aspect of your life. Deny it if you can.

"Allow me my ironic bow. I am here, madam, to perform this deed for you. I am everything you are not. I was blazing atoms in an artificial star, have been resonances of electromagnetic fire, and cold iron and gridwork machines in vast webs cast between the nebulae.

"I am stone and organism, alive and dead, whole and sundered. I am the voiceless given a tongue to speak.

"I will speak."

And yet, the irony was not lost on Armiger that on this world, stones did speak; that the very air sighed its voices in his ear. It was the humans who were deaf to the language of the Winds. Armiger, though he heard that language, did not understand it. The sound of his own words was quickly absorbed into the stone of the walls, the ancient tapestries, the lacquered wood cabinets. And in all these things the Winds resided.

Armiger knew they could listen if they chose; he suspected they did not care what he said. The masters of Ventus went on about their incomprehensible tasks, whispering and muttering all around him.

He had spoken half for their benefit, but they ignored him, as they had since he had arrived on Ventus. So, he thought, his words dissolved into the stone, into the carpets, into the wood. Save for the two women who stood with him, none heard his brave boast.

Yet, though none in the palace heard, still his voice went out. It penetrated the chambers and halls of the ancient building, and passed through the sand and stone of the earth as if they were an inch of air. In the high clouds from which the raindrop-dwelling Precip Winds gazed down, Armiger's voice flickered as unread heat-lightning on a frequency they did not attend. Even the Diadem swans, swirling in a millenial dance among the van Allen belts, could have heard had they known to listen.

No swan heard, nor any stone-devouring mountain Wind, or any of the elemental and immortal spirits of the world. But a solitary youth, lonely and sad by a lonely campfire mouthed Armiger's words, and sat up straight to listen.

16

Tamsin Germaix spotted the man by the road first. Her uncle was busy talking about some grand ball he'd been to in the capital. Her eyes and hands had been busy all morning on a new piece of embroidery, much more difficult than the last one Uncle had her do. But every now and then (and she hid this from him) she had to stop because her hands began to shake. Now was such a time: she frowned at them, betraying as they were, and looked up to see the man.

The figure was sitting on a rock by the road, hunched over. It would take them a few minutes to pass him, since uncle was more interested in his story than in speed, and anyway every jolt of the cart sent spikes of pain up Tamsin's sprained ankle. She had the splinted shin encased in pillows, and wore a blanket over her lap against the chill morning air; still, she was far from comfortable.

Certainly they had passed farmers and other lowborn persons walking by the road. This track was what passed for a main road in this forsaken part of backward Memnonis. Why, in the past day alone, they'd met three cows and a whole flock of sheep!

"...hold your knife properly, not the way you did at dinner last night," her uncle was saying. "Are you listening to me?"

"Yes, uncle."

"There'll be feasts like that again, once we're back home. It'll only be a few days now." He scratched at the stubble on his chin uncertainly. "Things can't have changed that much."

She watched the seated figure over the rounded rump of one of their horses. He looked odd. Not like a farmer at all. First of all, he seemed to be dressed in red, a rare color for the lowborn. Secondly, she could see a fluff of gold around his collar, and at his waist.

"Uncle, there's a strange man on the road ahead."

"Huh?" He came instantly alert. "Only one? Is he waving to us? Ah, I see him."

Uncle Suneil had told her about bandits, and how to identify them. This apparition certainly didn't fit that mould.

As they drew closer Tamsin levered herself to her feet and looked down at the man. He seemed young, with black hair and dressed nattily. His clothes, though, were mud-spattered and torn, and he had a large leather knapsack over one shoulder. He held a knife in one hand and a piece of half-carved stick in the other. He was whittling.

He stood up suddenly as if in alarm, but he wasn't look in their direction. He had dropped his knife, and now he picked it up again, and started walking away up the road. He seemed to be talking to himself.

"I still think he's a bandit. Or crazy! He must have taken those clothes off of a victim."

Her uncle shook his head. "A proper young lady knows fine tailoring. Look, you'll see his clothes have been made to fit him nicely. Now sit down, before you fall off the wagon."

She sat down. He certainly looked mysterious, but after all, they didn't know who he was. She knew the mature thing to do would be pass him by; she knit her hands in her lap and waited for her uncle to prod the horses into a faster walk.

Uncle Suneil raised a hand. "Ho, traveller! Well met on the road to Iapysia!"

All he had done for two days was walk. Jordan was exhausted now and was beginning to think his journey to meet with Armiger might be impossible. Calandria had bundled food for several people into her saddle bags, but it weighed a lot. He rested when he needed, and carefully lit a fire before bedding down each night. Despite that, his feet hurt and his shoulders were strained from carrying the heavy bags. So, as midmorning burned away the cold of last night, he sat down on a stone by the side of the road to rest.

He would have given up walking, were it not that whenever he paused to rest, he saw visions of far-off places, and knew they were real. Knowing that fed his determination to keep going.

He needed an activity to keep the visions at bay. He had taken to whittling, and now he pulled out a stick he'd begun this morning, and began carving away at it, lips pursed.

Last night Jordan had sat rapt at his meagre fire as Armiger spoke to Queen Galas. "You wish to hear human speech issue from the inhuman, from the rocks and trees," the general had said. "Could a stone speak, what would it say?" It was almost as though the general knew he was listening.

Armiger had not gone on to tell his story. It was late, and the queen had deferred the audience until some time today. Jordan was not disappointed; he had lain awake for hours, thinking about Armiger's words. He had pushed aside his self-pity and exhaustion, and made himself come to a decision. It was time to take the step he had been avoiding.

Despite his private miseries and loneliness, Jordan had not forgotten for a moment that Armiger's was not the only voice he could hear. On the evening when the Heaven hooks descended, Jordan had learned he could hear the voices of the Winds too. Until this morning he had deliberately tuned them out, because he'd been afraid that at any moment the Heaven hooks would rear out of the empty sky and grab him up.

He had bundled Calandria May's golden gauze into a kind of poncho, then awkwardly buttoned his jacket over that. The gold stuff stuck out behind him like a bird's tail, and up around his neck like a dandy's ruff. But he was pretty sure it was still doing its duty. The Winds did not know where he was.

As the Heaven hooks descended on the Boros estate, Jordan had learned that he could hear the little voices of inanimate and animate things. Each object within his sight had a voice, he now knew. Each thing proclaimed its identity, over and over, the way a bird calls its name all day for no reason but the joy in its own voice. Now that he knew they were there, Jordan could attune himself to the sound of that endless murmur. Last night and this morning, he had worked at tuning into and out of that listening stance as he walked.

If he closed his eyes, he could see a ghostly landscape, mostly made up of words hovering over indistinct objects. He could make little sense of that, so he left that avenue alone.

It seemed that he could focus his inner hearing on individual objects, if he concentrated hard enough.

He held up the knife he had been whittling with, and concentrated on it. After a few minutes he began to hear its voice. "Steel," it said. "A steel blade. Carbon steel, a knife."

At the Boros estate, Jordan had spoken to a little soul like this, and it had answered. I am stone, a doorway arch had said to him. This ability to speak to things didn't surprise him as much as it might have, considering everything that had happened. According to the priest Allegri, some people had visions of the Winds, and the Winds didn't punish them for this. Allegri had told Jordan that he might be one of those with such a talent. He had been wrong at the time; what Jordan had been experiencing then was visions of Armiger—and those, the Winds surely disliked.

But this? This communion with a simple object seemed to have nothing to do with Armiger. Maybe it had been enabled by whatever Calandria May had done to Jordan's head. But was it forbidden by the Winds?

Well, he had Calandria's protective gauze. Jordan was confident he could hear the approach of the greater Winds in time to don it and escape.

It came down, then, to a matter of courage.

"What are you?" he asked the knife.

"I am knife," said the knife.

Even though he was expecting it, Jordan was so startled he dropped the thing.

He picked it up, and began nervously walking. "Knife, what are you made of?"

The voice in his head was clear, neutral, neither male nor female: "I am a combination of iron and carbon. The carbon is a hardening agent."

He nodded, wondering what else to ask it. The obvious question was, "How is that you can speak?"

"I am broadcasting a combined fractal signal on visible frequencies of radiation."

The answer had made no sense. "Why can't other people hear you?"

"They are not equipped to receive."

That was kind of a restatement of the question, he thought. How will I get anywhere if I don't know what to ask?

He thought for a moment, shrugged, and said, "Who made you?"

"Ho, traveller! Well met on the road to Iapysia!"

For just a split second he thought the knife had said that. Then Jordan looked behind him. A large covered wagon drawn by two horses was coming up the road. Two people sat at the front. The driver was waving to him.

Suddenly very self-conscious, he slipped the knife into his belt. He knew the gold gauze was sticking out at his collar and waist, but there was no time to do anything about that.

"Uh, hello." The man's accent had been foreign. He was middle aged, almost elderly, with a fringe of white hair around his sunburnt skull. He was dressed in new-looking townsman's clothes.

The other passenger was a woman. She looked to be about Jordan's age. She was dressed in frills and wore a sun hat, but her face under it was tanned, the one whisp of stray hair sunbleached. She held a embroidery ring in strong, calloused hands. She was scowling at Jordan.

"Where are you bound, son?" asked the man.

Jordan gestured. "South. Iapysia."

"Ah. So are we. Returning home?"

"Uh, yeah."

"But you accent is Memnonian," said the old man.

"Um, uh. We have houses in both countries," he said, mindful of the Boros example. He was itching to listen in to the voices again; he had to know if his dialogue with the knife had alerted the Winds. At the Boros manor, the whole landscape had come alert, almost overwhelming his senses. That wasn't happening now. But he couldn't be sure without checking.

"My name's Milo Suneil," said the man. "And this is—"

"Excuse me," gritted the young woman. She stood abruptly and climbed into the covered back of the wagon.

"...My niece, Tamsin," finished Suneil. "Who is not herself today. And you are?"

"Jordan Mason." He affected the half-bow that the highborn Boros had used on one another. It was harder to perform while walking, though.

"Pleased to meet you." There was a momentary silence. The cart was moving at just the pace Jordan was walking, so he remained abreast of Suneil. From the back of the wagon came the sound of things being tossed about.

"Calm weather, for autumn," said Suneil. Jordan agreed that it was. "Clouds moving in, though. Not good—clouds could hide things in the sky, don't you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"News travels slowly, I see!" Suneil laughed. "You're dressed like a highborn lad, surely you've heard the news about the destruction of the Boros household!"

"Ah, that. Yes. I did hear about it," he said uncomfortably.

"I'm itching to find out what really happened," said Suneil. "We've had ten versions of the story from ten different people. When I saw you walking by the road, coming from the direction of the estate, I thought, could it be? A refugee from our little disaster?"

Jordan, unsure of himself in this situation, merely shrugged.

Suneil was silent for a while, staring ahead. "The fact is," he said at last, "that my curiosity has gotten the best of me. If we were to run into someone who actually knew what had happened at the estate—or Winds forbid, someone who was actually there!—then I might be inclined to give that person a ride with us, provided they told their story."

"I see," said Jordan neutrally.

"My niece has sprained her leg," added Suneil. "And I'm not as young as I used to be. We'll need someone to gather firewood, the next day or so."

Jordan was very surprised. People didn't trust strangers on the open road. Then again, one never travelled alone, either.

Do I look that harmless? he wondered.

"It's all right," said Suneil reasonably. "I'm not a Heaven hook, nor am I in league with them. I just deduced that you were at the Boros place, because you're walking from that direction, and you're dressed well, except for the mud stains and wild hair. Actually, you look like you fled somewhere in a hurry. We've passed a couple of people who looked like that—only none would talk to us."

Jordan eyed the cart greedily. He was very tired. A few days ride in return for some carefully edited storytelling couldn't hurt anything. In fact, it might be the only way he'd get to Iapysia.

"All right," he said. "I'm your man."

Tamsin cowered back into the wagon. Uncle must be insane! He was picking up strange men on the highway—they were sure to be robbed and raped by this crazy person who talked to himself and had gold cloth stuffed in his shirt.

She felt the wagon dip deeply as the man stepped up onto the front seat. Then it commenced rolling forward. She sat down on a bale of cloth, disconsolately picking at her embroidery. Finally she threw it on the floor.

Some days were fine. Today had started out that way. Some days, she could wake up in the morning, and clouds would be just clouds, water just water. She could actually smell breakfast as she cooked it, and feel hungry. Some days she could listen to Uncle's plans, and tease into life a small spark of enthusiasm that he seemed to know she had. She could look forward to being an ingenue at Rhiene or one of the other great cities of Iapysia. So there were days when she practised her curtsies, her embroidery, and recited the epic poems Uncle had coached her in.

And then there were days... Her hands trembled again as she reached down to massage her leg. She couldn't remember why she had been running—all she remembered was the overwhelming bleakness of the landscape. Bare trees, yellow grass. Cold air. Her own thoughts and feelings were inaccessible to her. One thing was sure, she was certainly not looking where she was going that morning. No wonder she'd sprained her leg.

Sometimes the tiniest little annoyance would set her off in a fit of temper that made her Uncle's eyes widen in disbelief. Once it was because she had dropped a stitch! He did nothing to calm her down, but let her play it out. Afterward, she was always listless and ashamed.

I will not explode, she told herself. Even if Uncle is trying to get us killed.

They were talking up there—chatting like old friends. Of course, he did that with strangers all the time, but it was normally when they stopped at roadside markets or near towns. Uncle was an insatiable vessel for news, and these last two days he had been stopping everyone for information about the horrible incident at the Boros estate. It just wasn't like him to pick people up off the road to talk.

Tamsin gritted her teeth and glared at the canvas flap. It was true an extra set of hands would be good right now. Rationally, she understood it. It didn't stop her seething.

She sat in the dimness for a while, arms crossed, trying not to think. Thinking was bad. It led to things worse than anger.

This will all end soon, she told herself. When we get to Rhiene everything will be different. Meanwhile, she would have to make adjustments, and test her patience. So, after a little while, she adjusted her hair, planted a smile on her face, and opened the front flap of the cart's canopy.

"Hello," she said brightly to the startled young man who was in her seat. She held out her hand. "My name's Tamsin. What's yours?"

Calandria May slung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder, and made her way out of the market. The place was still buzzing with talk of the Boros catastrophe; the consensus was that the Winds had finally gotten around to punishing the family for unspecified past excesses. Attendance at church here in the town of Geldon was decidedly up.

There was some confused discussion of Yuri's assassination. It was laid at the feet of Brendan Sheia, and two spies from Ravenon were named as accomplices. That explained why Calandria was currently disguised as a boy. She had cropped her hair and changed her voice and mannerisms. Right now she used the bag of potatoes to add swing to her shoulders as she walked, since otherwise her lower center of balance was harder to disguise.

People were also talking about Jordan Mason. No one knew his name, but some people had witnessed a confrontation between Turcaret and a young man. The controller had accused the youth of bringing the Heaven hooks down on the household.

Her shoulders itched as she walked—a familiar feeling that she was being watched, or followed. It had nothing to do with any townspeople who might glance at her on the way by. This was an older, and more fundamental, fear.

If she closed her eyes, Calandria could invoke her inscape senses: infrared sight and the galvanic radar that told of the presence of mecha or Winds. She couldn't help herself—every few minutes, she paused, closed her eyes, and looked around using these senses.

Ever since the night that the Heaven hooks came down, Calandria had refused to let herself be lulled back into thinking that Ventus was a natural place. She was trapped in the gears of a giant, globe-spanning machine—a nanotech terraforming system that barely tolerated her kind. This appeared to be ordinary dirt she walked on, but it had been manufactured; it took more than the thousand years that Ventus had been habitable for soil like this to form naturally. The air seemed fresh and clean, but that too was moderated by unseen forces.

Those unseen forces were a threat. They might yet kill her. So she remained vigilant.

Calandria turned into a narrow alley and went through a roughhewn door that had a latch but no lock. Up a flight of stairs, through another door, and she was home.

This was the safe room where they had intended to hide August Ostler. The room was about four by six meters. It had one window which let out on the street—not an advantage, because mostly it just let in the smell of the open sewer that ran down the center of the lane. The place was built of plaster and lath. Calandria could hear the landlady snoring in the room next door. But it was out of the elements, and warm at night. That was all that mattered.

Currently everything she had was in this room, or on her person. Their horses had been killed in the destruction of the Boros stables, and she never had recovered her pack with its supplies of offworld technology. That had complicated matters, over the past couple of days.

Axel Chan grunted something and shifted in his sleep. His face was still flushed from the fever that had gripped him since Turcaret's attack. His diagnostic nano were supposed to be able to handle routine infections. They didn't seem to be working. Without the proper equipment, Calandria couldn't determine why, though she suspected the local mecha were suppressing the offworld technology.

Would the same mecha contact the Winds and warn them of the presence of aliens here? Each night as she lay down, Calandria found herself imagining the harsh armatures of the Heaven hooks reaching down to pluck this small room apart.

It wasn't like her to be afraid. But then, she was never afraid of merely physical threats. This was something else.

She put the potatoes down on the room's one table. Axel coughed, and sat up.

"How are you feeling?" Calandria ladled some cold soup out and put it next to Axel. He drank it eagerly.

"As the good people of Memnonis like to say, I feel like a toad in a pisspot. Is this brackish swill best you could do?"

She sighed. "Axel, have you ever been truly ill in your life?"

"No."

She nodded. "Why?" asked Axel after a moment.

"Because your nurses would surely have strangled you in your bed, the way you carry on."

"Oh, ho," he said. "Leave then. I'll be fine on my own." He coughed weakly. "I'll manage somehow... I'll feed on the rats and bugs, and be sure to die somewhere out of the way, where no one will trip over my shrivelling corpse."

She laughed. "You do sound much better."

"Well..." He raised his arms and examined them. "I no longer feel like I'll leak all over if I just stand up. I should be able to ride in a day or two."

She shook her head. "It's going to take longer than that. We need you in top form when we go after Armiger."

He nodded, and sank back on the straw bed. "Any word on Jordan?"

"No one knows what happened to him, and I have no way to track him now. We used the Desert Voice's sensors to locate Armiger's remotes the first time. With the Voice missing, we don't have that option. Anyway, Jordan's probably on his way home. No reason he shouldn't be."

Axel shifted uncomfortably. "I don't like it. I still feel responsible."

"I know," she said. "But our first responsibility is to find Armiger and destroy him. If we don't do that, then Jordan won't be safe, no matter where he is."

Axel appeared to accept this logic. "I assume," he said, "that we're not going to take Armiger on ourselves at this point. Just track him down."

She nodded, coming to sit next to him. With the loss of the Desert Voice, they no longer had the firepower to destroy Armiger themselves. They would need help. At the same time, having the firepower wasn't enough: they had to find Armiger, run him to ground. Calandria wanted to be sure of where he was before they left Ventus for reinforcements.

Axel looked better, but was still pale. He'd lost weight. "As soon as we get a ping from a passing ship we'll try to get offworld," she promised. "Meanwhile, we can't afford to lose track of him."

"We may have already." He closed his eyes, wincing as he tried to turn on his side. "We don't know for sure that he's going after the queen."

"Yes. Well, it's all we've got." Axel didn't reply, and after a moment she stood and went to the window. His breathing deepened with sleep behind her, as Calandria looked out and up at a blue sky full of rolling white clouds. She fought the urge to look behind that facade at the alien machinery that maintained it.

Losing the Desert Voice was a catastrophe. She loved her ship, but more than that, they would have needed its power in order to destroy Armiger. Somewhere out there, beyond the rooftops and the clear air, he was hatching his schemes. She should be able to see him, like a stain on the landscape, she thought. It was horrifying that he should be invisible to the people he was setting out to enslave.

Calandria hugged herself, remembering what it had been like on the one world of 3340's she had visited. The people of Hsing had been traumatized to the point of madness; their only goal in life—more an obsession—was to win the attention and favor of 3340 by any means possible, so as to avoid destruction and win immortality as one of its demigod slaves. People would do anything, up to and including mass murder, to gain its attention. And once enslaved, they became embodiments of their most base instincts, in turn enslaving hundreds or thousands of innocents; or simply slaughtering them as unwanted potential competition.

And all the while, 3340 had eaten away at the skies and earth, rendering the planet progressively more toxic for the few unchanged humans who struggled to survive in the ruins.

Armiger might find the key he was looking for at any moment. Irrevocable change would come sweeping from over the horizon like a tsunami, and this time Calandria would not be able to stop it.

She sat down by the window, and forced her hands to stay still in her lap. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait—and watch the skies for a sign that the world was ending.

17

Megan had never seen so many books. They crowded on high shelves around all the walls of a large room on the third floor of the palace. All the shelves had diamond-patterned glass doors. She watched as Armiger walked from cabinet to cabinet, opening them in turn and gazing at their contents. This was their second day here, but as yet the queen had not found the time to speak to them. Armiger was getting restless.

The books didn't interest Megan, but the room itself was sumptuous. It contained a number of couches and leather-bound armchairs, with side-tables and many tall oil lamps. The entire floor was covered with overlapping carpets that glowed in the shafts of morning light falling from tall windows along one wall. She curled up in one of the armchairs, feet under her, to watch as Armiger prowled.

This room and the others in the queen's apartments provided a shocking contrast to the other parts of the palace she had seen. Below this tower, the palace grounds were crowded with the tents of refugees; children and the wounded cried everywhere, there was talk of cholera. The lower corridors and outbuildings bristled with armed men, and conversation there was strained and infrequent. Here, though, it was like another world—luxurious and calm.

Megan knew she would always remember their entry into these walls. Her first glimpse of the interior of the Summer Palace had been of torchlight gleaming off the helmets of a sea of men. Ragged banners hung from the facades of buildings half-ruined by Parliament's steam-cannon. The place reeked of fear and human waste. She had shrunk back on Armiger's arm as they were led along cordoned avenues between the tents, and into the vast tower that held Galas' audience chambers. And the moment they were inside its walls, they were in a minor paradise.

This contrast had disturbed her more than the misery itself. It still disturbed her, the more so since she found herself responding to the comfort of this armchair, the warmth of the nearby fire.

"Amazing," said Armiger.

She smiled. "You? Amazed? I doubt it."

He reached up to take down a very large, heavy and scrofulous looking volume. "I've been looking for this one since I arrived," he said. He waggled it at her as he went to perch on the edge of a desk. "Early histories relating some of the events immediately post-landing."

"Really?" She didn't know what he was talking about, but it was good to see him enthusiastic about something—something other than this queen Galas, anyway.

Armiger flipped through the pages quickly. "Hmm. Ah. There are major distortions, as one would expect from such a large passage of time."

"How large?"

"A thousand years. Not really very long; living memory for me, most of it. And on Earth there are complete daily records of practically everything that went on there from before that time... but Earth never Fell the way Ventus did. Miraculous." He shut the book; it made a satisfying thud and a waft of dust rose before his face.

"I take it you are glad we came," she said. "Despite the army outside?"

He waved his hand, dismissing either the dust or the besieging force. "Yes. I'm most likely to find out what I want to know here. In case they burn this library down, I'm going to read it."

"Read it? The whole thing? Tonight?" She didn't hide her disbelief.

"Well... maybe not all. Most, anyway." He smiled, an increasingly common thing lately.

"But why? This queen, she is important to you for what she can tell you. I see that now. But why is she so special? You want to talk to her. Her people want to kill her. What has she done?"

Armiger inspected another shelf. "Of course you wouldn't get much news living alone in the country as you did. Where to start, though? Galas has always been different, apparently.

"She was installed on the throne at a young age by the Winds. No one knows why. Whatever they wanted, she apparently didn't provide it, because they haven't lifted a finger to stop Parliament marching on her. But she's done extraordinary things."

He came to sit on the arm of a couch near her. "Galas is the sort of philosopher-monarch who arises once in a millenium," he said. "She may rank with Earthly rulers like Mao in terms of the scope of her accomplishments. People like her aren't content to merely rule a nation—they want to reinvent both it and the people who live in it."

Megan was puzzled, but interested now. "What do you mean, reinvent?"

"New beliefs. New religions. New economics, new science. And not just as a process of reform or nation-building. Rather as a single artistic whole. During her reign Galas has viewed her nation as an artistic medium to be shaped."

She shifted uncomfortably. "That's... horrible."

Armiger seemed surprised. "Why? Her impulse has been to improve things. And she's almost never used force, certainly not against the common people. Her actions are reminiscent of those of the Amarna rulers of ancient Egypt... sorry, I keep referring to things you can't know.

"Anyway, what she did was give her people a completely new, and all-encompassing, vision of the world. Nothing has been left unchanged—art, commerce, she has even tried to reform the language itself."

Megan laughed. "That's silly."

Armiger shrugged. "She's failed at a lot of things. In terms of language, she tried to ban the use of possessives when speaking of emotional states, motives and people. So that you could not say, 'he is my husband' for instance."

She glowered. "That is evil."

"But you could also not say that something is his fault, or her fault. She wanted to remove assignments of blame from speech and writing, and refocus expression on contexts of behavior. To eliminate victimless crimes, crimes of ostracization, for instance the 'crime' of being a homosexual. Also to move the emphasis of Justice away from blame and punishment to behavior management. Far too ambitious for a single generation. So it didn't work.

"But no one on Ventus has ever thought of these things before. Galas is entirely original in her thinking."

"So why are they out there?" She pointed to the windows.

"Oh, the usual reasons. She started threatening the stability of the ruling classes, at least in their own eyes. No ruler who does that ever stands for long. She'd built experimental towns recently, out in the desert. Each operated on some one of the new principles she espoused. Naturally most of them flew in the face of orthodox mores. Of course the salt barons will revolt if you display an interest in eliminating money from commerce!"

"You make me sound like a fool."

Galas stood in the doorway, in a blue morning-dress, her hair bound up by golden pins. Megan hurried to her feet and curtsied. Armiger languidly bowed, shaking his head.

"It is merely the voice of experience, your majesty. Humans become violent when they feel their interests are threatened."

Galas scowled. "They were never threatened! Parliament is a rumor-mill staffed by trough-fed clods who abuse the tongue of their birth every time they open their mouths. They all gabble at once and confuse one another mightily, and when this confusion is committed to paper they refer to it as 'policy'."

"I won't dispute that, having never attended," Armiger said.

The queen swept into the room. Two members of the royal guard followed, to take positions on either side of the doorway. "I had to try," Galas said bitterly. "For centuries no one has tried anything new! So what would be one more life in dumb service to tradition? Where would it get us, except back where we started when the wheel of this life had come around again? Someone had to ask questions men have been afraid to ask all that time. It has always been obvious to me that no one else would do it, either now or in the future. I had to do it all, even the things you call foolish. Else how could we know anything? Anything at all?"

Armiger said nothing, but he nodded in acquiescence.

"Sometimes one's responsibility goes beyond one's own generation," Galas said. She sat in the chair next to Megan's, and smiled at her warmly. "I trust you slept well, lady?"

"Yes, thank you, your highness."

"And you, Sir Maut? Do you even sleep?" Her voice held a teasing note.

He inclined his head. "When it suits me." Then he frowned. "I hope you don't view us a pair of jesters, here to distract you from what's waiting outside your gates. My purpose is quite serious—as serious as your own situation."

Galas' eyes flashed, but she only said, "I remain to be convinced. That is all."

"Fair enough." Armiger moved from his perch on the arm of the couch, to sit down properly. "So, who am I, and what do I want of you? That is what you would like to know."

Galas nodded. Megan saw that the moth-note Armiger had written her was stuck, folded, through the belt of her dress. Perhaps she had been rereading it over breakfast. For reassurance?

Megan couldn't begin to imagine what it must be like for her, with those men camped outside, waiting permission to brutalize and destroy everything. Servants killed, treasured possessions robbed... but Galas was outwardly cool.

She must be crying inside. It's cruel of Armiger to give her any hope now.

"Ask me anything," said Armiger. "Ask me something to test my knowledge, if you wish."

"Were all my mistakes obvious?" blurted the queen. "Is what I've fought for all my life trivially simple anywhere else? Am I a primitive, next to the people who live on other stars?"

"They might think so," said Armiger. "I do not."

"If you are what you say you are, then it makes all the pain I've suffered—and inflicted—pointless." Galas was not looking at them, but off into the middle distance. "I've been so busy since you arrived, making final preparations... the assault will come soon. But there hasn't been an instant when I didn't wonder why I was bothering. If everything I've tried to discover was learned millenia ago... I feel like the gods are laughing at me. I feel like an ant all puffed up with pride over having laboriously mapped out the boundaries of a garden. I don't think you can tell me anything to change that impression."

Armiger smiled. "I must be the fool, then, to waste my time talking to an ant."

"Don't make light of this!" She rose and went to stand over him. Megan was amazed at how Galas seemed to tower over Armiger, though the difference in their heights was such that even with him sitting, they were almost eye to eye.

Armiger was unfazed. "I was not. It is you who are belittling yourself."

Galas whirled and walked to the windows. "Then tell me I'm wrong! Tell me about the heavens—who lives there, what are they like? Have you walked on other planets? Talked to their people? Are they all-knowing, all-wise—or are they fools like us?"

Armiger's smiled grew wider. "They are all-knowing, but no wiser than anyone else. In fact, since they know everything they believe they possess the wisdom of the ages. Hence, I'd have to say, they are bigger fools than you."

"But I don't want to hear that either," said the queen. "Because it means there is no progress. If I educate my people and yet they remain fools, why have I bothered?"

Armiger crossed his arms, shrugged at Megan, but said nothing.

"All right," said Galas. She turned around and leaned on the windowsill. "Tell me about the heavens, please. I do want to know."

Many leagues away, Jordan Mason paused in his whittling and closed his eyes. He had been basking in the wan autumn sunlight and listening to Armiger and Megan with half an ear. He sat on a log by the remains of last night's fire; he faced away from the wagon, where the girl Tamsin was hiding again.

Jordan had told a carefully edited version of the story of the Boros catastrophe yesterday. Both Suneil and his niece had listened intently. He had excluded any mention of Axel and Calandria, and said nothing about August's duel or the attack by Turcaret's men. Apparently the word was out that Yuri and Turcaret had been killed; Jordan simply shrugged and said he hadn't seen that. His story was that he had panicked and run. Since he was visiting the household on his own anyway, he had just kept walking when daybreak came. Suneil seemed to accept this. It wasn't at all implausible that he should want to get as far away from the place as possible, after all.

Suneil had arisen early this morning, but had said little. Jordan walked the boundaries of the small encampment, kicking the dirt and wondering whether his presence here was endangering these two.

When he heard Galas ask Armiger about the heavens, he forgot all about his problems. Megan had never asked about that, and Jordan was intensely curious. When he closed his eyes he could see what Armiger saw, and if he stayed still the voices became clearer and clearer, until he seemed to be there with them.

The words seemed to emerge from his own mouth. Whenever that happened, Jordan felt almost as though they were his own thoughts he was speaking, and he invariably remembered them with perfect clarity later. Just now he was saying, "The stars in the night sky have their retinue of planets. Millions are inhabited, but if you gaze up at them tonight, know that only one in every thousand you see has people living by it, there are that many. Millions have been visited and explored, but for every one of them a million more are still mysteries.

"Humans like yourself moved into the galaxy a thousand years ago. Your ancient homeworld is now a park, where few can go except by special permission. All the other worlds in the home system were settled centuries ago, and are overflowing now. The've even dismantled the minor planets and smaller moons and built new habitats with them. The population of that star system is now over seventy trillion.

"Many other stars have similarly huge civilizations. Add to that the dozens of alien species, genetically altered humans, cyborgs, demigods and gods, and the peace you see in the sky seems more and more like an illusion."

"What are these things?" asked the queen. "Cyborgs? Demigods?"

"Mecha," said Armiger curtly. "But designed by people for the most part. Some people have had themselves transformed into mechal beings, so that they can live in hostile environments, like open space, or the crushing depths of giant planets' atmospheres. The boundary between human and nonhuman began to blur centuries ago, and now it's completely gone."

"And you? What are you?"

Jordan felt Armiger's hands form fists in his lap. "Demigod. Human once, I think—but I no longer remember. I'm ancient, your highness, but mortal. Even the gods are mortal. And I will die, unless I can find a secret known only to the Winds of Ventus."

Armiger was lying, according to what Calandria had told Jordan when they travelled together. She had told him the demigod had come to Ventus to subvert the Winds, and take control of the entire world. He knew Armiger was weakening, though, and Jordan didn't know if he could trust Calandria May.

"What is this secret?"

"It is the secret of why the Winds ignore or abuse humanity," said Armiger.

Galas laughed. "Countless generations have wondered that. I do too. Do you believe I have the secret?"

"I think you may know more than you realize."

"You came to see me because of the legends," she accused. "They say the Winds placed me on the throne, so I am assumed to know their secrets. For a god, you are rather naive, Maut."

He waved a hand dismissively. "The legends brought you to my attention, but even if they're wrong, I made the right choice in coming to you. I am sure of it."

"Now you speak like a courtier."

"My apologies."

Galas returned to her seat. Jordan admired her through Armiger's eyes; she was not so old as she had appeared in the throne room—perhaps in her late thirties. This war was aging her prematurely, he thought. He wanted to touch her, but had never learned the trick of making Armiger's limbs move at his own urging.

"Why not just ask the Winds of another world?" asked the queen.

"There are no other Winds. There is no other place like Ventus."

Jordan watched Galas' eyes widen. He remembered sympathetically how he had reacted when Calandria told him the same thing. "But," she started, "you just spoke of millions of worlds—trillions of people—"

"There are a million organizing principles in human space. None resemble Ventus. Your world is unique, and the records of the design of the Winds were lost in a war centuries ago. Most of humanity lives in something known as the Archipelago—an immense region whose boundaries are so vague that much of its citizenry doesn't even know of its existence."

"Now you're talking madness," smiled the queen. "Not that anything you've said so far would survive debate in the House."

"Archipelago is the only answer to ruling a population of trillions, who own a million different cultures, mores and histories." He shrugged. "It is simple: an artificial intelligence—a mechal brain, if you will—exists that mediates things. It knows each and every citizen personally, and orchestrates their meetings with others, communications and so on so as to avoid irreconcilable conflict. Beyond that, it stays out of sight, for it has no values, no desires of its own. It is as if every person had their own guardian spirit, and these spirits never warred, but acted in concert to improve people's lives."

"A tyranny of condescension," said Galas.

"Yes. You worried earlier that everything was known. Well, yes and no. The government of the Archipelago has the sum of human knowledge and can speak it directly into people's minds. But it's only the sum of human knowledge. It is only one perspective. Here on Ventus, something quite different has come to exist. A new wisdom, you might say. The sum of the knowledge of an entire conscious world, unsullied by human perspective. Ventus, you see, is infinitely precious."

"Then why aren't they here? A trillion tourists from the sky?"

"The Winds don't permit visitors. Though there are a few, I suppose—researchers vainly trying to crack the cyphers of the Diadem Swans. Hiding from the Winds, of course."

"But you slipped in."

"I did. The Winds know something I must learn if I am to survive. I cannot speak to them. So I must ask you, as the one person on Ventus who knows them best, to help me."

"And why should I help?"

Armiger stood and walked to one of the tall windows. "Outside your gates is an army. That army did not need to come here. You need never have embarked on the path that led you here. And you knew things would end this way, didn't you? It was inevitable from the moment you began to try to change the fundamental beliefs of your people."

Below this high window he could see a crowded, hectic courtyard. Beyond that, walls, then the hazy, unbelievable crush of the besieging army.

"They had to kill you in the end," he said.

"Yes," said the queen in a small voice. "But I had to try... to end this long night that has swallowed the whole world."

He turned, and Jordan felt his eyes narrow, his mouth set hard. "Then help me. If I survive, I may well be able to do what you could not."

"I said, hello."

Jordan looked up. Suneil's niece Tamsin stood in front of him, arms crossed, her head cocked to one side.

He was annoyed at the interruption, and almost told her to go away-but he was a guest of these people, after all. "I was meditating."

"Uh, huh. Looked more like sleeping with your mouth open."

Jordan opened his mouth, closed it again, and then said, "Did you want something?"

"Uncle wants a good supply of firewood in the wagon before we get to the border. Isn't that why you're here, to do that stuff for us?"

Jordan stood and stretched. "It is indeed." He saw no need to say anything more to this shrew.

"Well good," she said as she followed him into the grass. "We wouldn't want any freeloaders on this trip."

Jordan noticed that Suneil was watching this exchange from the vicinity of the wagon. "I'll work my keep," said Jordan, as he increased his stride to outdistance her.

"See that you do!" she hollered. Then, apparently satisfied, she limped back to the wagon and began arguing with her uncle about something.

As soon as he was out of sight of the camp, Jordan sat down and tried to re-establish his link with Armiger. This time, it took all his concentration to bring the voices to him; Tamsin seemed to be a bad influence on his concentration. When the voices did return, he found that Armiger and the queen were now discussing military logistics. The terms meant nothing to Jordan, so he stood up with a sigh, and went to gather the wood.

When Jordan staggered back his first load of sticks, Suneil was sitting on the wagon's back step, but Tamsin was nowhere to be seen. "I apologize for my niece," said Suneil. "She lost her parents and sister recently. The shock has brought all her emotions to the surface."

"The war?"

Suneil nodded. "The war. We fled Iapysia three months ago to escape it. Now we're on our way back. They say the queen is defeated... maybe things have settled down."

"I don't know," said Jordan. "I know you can't run away forever." He longed for home. Once he had gotten Armiger to raise this curse that was on him, he would return to Castor's manor.

"Well spoken," said Suneil. "You were patient with her just now. I'm glad. She strikes out, but if you strike back, she'll shatter like glass. Just remember that. I know it's an imposition, but—"

Jordan waved a hand. "No, it's fine. These things happen. We have to help one another."

Suneil grinned. "Thanks. And thanks for the wood. We're going to need a lot more, though, when we get to the border."

"Why?"

Suneil glanced at him, raised an eyebrow. "Well, you said you're from Iapysia, you'd know there's no trees in the desert, wouldn't you?"

"Uh... yes, of course."

Suneil gave him an odd little smile, and walked away.

Two days' travel brought them deep into the barren hills that signified the border of Iapysia. He was confident now that the Winds did not know where he was. The gauze continued to protect him, and hence the people he travelled with. That was good; but he couldn't wear it for the rest of his life. He would have to find Armiger soon—or Calandria would, and either way there would be an end to this.

He was riding up front with Suneil when the wagon topped the crest of a particularly long hill, and Suneil reined in the horses. Standing to look at the vista below, Suneil sighed and said, "Home."

Jordan stood too. Sun had broken through a rent in the autumn clouds, illuminating the valley below within a vast golden rectangle. Within this frame, the land fell in a series of green steps to a landscape of grass and forest cradling a long sinuous lake. The road wound down switchbacks to the floor of the valley, and vanished beyond the sunlit frame at the far end of the lake, where the valley seemed to open out into a plain.

Jordan could see some blue-grey squares and lines near the lake. "Are those ruins?"

Suneil nodded. "That valley lies in Iapysia. The desert starts beyond it."

"It's beautiful. Nobody lives here?" He could see no sign of settlement, though he could easily imagine dozens of farms fitting in near the lake.

"The Winds do. It's okay to visit, but no one stays."

They sat down again, and Suneil flicked the reins. Over the past couple of days they had talked a lot about the local countryside, and Suneil had grilled Jordan at length about the war between Ravenon and the Seneschals. Jordan had spun a long tale about the destruction of Armiger's army and the death of the general, pretending he had heard it from other travellers.

His own eavesdropping had yielded few results, since the queen had not met with Armiger since their first encounter. She was busy with preparations for the siege, and it seemed Armiger was content to wait.

Jordan had reluctantly admitted to Suneil that he was not from Iapysia. His Memnonian accent didn't match his story. Suneil had asked no further questions, but he had also volunteered nothing about his own past. Jordan let his curiosity lead him now, though, as it seemed a natural time to ask. "Tell me about the war. And the queen. All I've heard is that she's mad, and that the great houses revolted."

Suneil nodded. "I suppose your countrymen think it's a scandal that we're deposing our queen." He scowled at the road that rolled down before them. "We do too. Even the soldiers in Parliament's army. But things got... out of control."

Jordan waited for more. After a while, Suneil said, "Iapysia's a very old country, but it was one of the last places settled. At the beginning of the world, they say the Winds made Ventus—and they're not finished making it yet. But they didn't make Man. Some say we made ourselves, some that we came from the stars, and some say that renegade Winds created us as an act of defiance. That's what I believe. How else to explain what Queen Galas has done?

"The first people spread across the world from one original tribe. They had great powers, and they wanted Ventus as their own. They fought the Winds, because the Winds were still sculpting Ventus, and would not let the people build cities or cultivate the land. Men defied them, but the Winds beat them down, until at last there were only scattered communities, who learned to get along with the Winds by obeying their laws. We learned to stay out of the Winds' way, and appease them when we went too far. Your general Armiger went too far—they took notice of him, and swatted him like an insect. There's a lesson in that.

"In the early days after our defeat, some folk wandered to the edge of the desert. There they found the desals hard at work, flooding the sands to strain salt from ocean water that poured in from the Titans' Gates—those are the Wind-built dams at the seaside. They pumped the newly freshened water deep into the earth. We know now that it comes up again through springs all across the continent. Back then, it was just another miraculous and incomprehensible activity of the rulers of the world. Our people huddled on the edge of it, watching the floods in awe.

"Iasin the first, ancestor of all the kings of Iapysia, was the man who realized that the desals were utterly indifferent to the plants and animals that struggled within the flood plains. The ocean water brought nutrients from the sea, the desert sands strained the salt, and fresh water poured up and out through a thousand channels into rivers that flow into your lands, or that vanish into bottomless lakes. A thousand kinds of life thrived during the flooding, and when the Titans' Gates closed to draw strength for another great gasp, they withered and died. Iasin led his people into the heart of the inundated lands, and they began to grow huge crops there, in open defiance of the Winds.

"Our people have always believed that we have a silent pact with the desals. All our laws were made to preserve the pact. As far as we can see, the desals will always use the desert to purify water for the continent. What was in the beginning, will be always. So it should be with our laws, our kings and our traditions.

"The laws are harsh. They dictate everything from our professions to the size of the family. Our cities have grown only so big as the desals will tolerate, and can grow no more. We cannot divert the Winds' rivers to suit our needs. The nobility trace their lineage back to the time of Iasin, as do people in the guilds and trades. All life is fixed. While your nations have been in a constant uproar of change and growth all these centuries, we know you will reach the same point eventually. Humanity cannot rule Ventus. We are merely tolerated. In my country, people believe that life will always be like it is now, for all eternity.

"I should say, we used to believe that. Then came Queen Galas, to upset a thousand years of tradition."

"What did she do?" asked Jordan. The swath of sunlight that had blanketed the valley below was gone, leaving the landscape blued by lowering clouds. More rain was coming.

Suneil pointed along the road that led past the long lake. "Our lives are tied to the floods. We prosper insofar as we can predict them. We have always relied on observation and our records to do that. Galas had no need of such indirect means. She negotiated with the desals, and the desert flooded when and where and by how much she said it would. No sovereign has ever had such power over nature. We prospered as we never have.

"It wasn't enough for her. Galas despises the Winds. She sees humanity as the rightful rulers of the world, and the Winds as usurpers. People find her views shocking, but who could argue with her success? She gained a great following, and began to erase a thousand years of law and tradition, replacing it with daring and unsettling edicts of her own. She wanted to remake the world in her own image.

"She went too far. About five years ago, the desals turned against her. Her predictions for that year's flooding were tragically wrong. Thousands died in the waters or the famine that came after. Whatever she had done to alienate the Winds, their rebuke simply hardened her heart. She pushed ahead with her reforms, although for our own survival we now had to fall back on our old ways of predicting the floods."

"You supported her," ventured Jordan.

"At first, yes. I won't pretend I didn't profit by it. By the time the Winds turned against her, I had become entirely her creature. I'm not a fool, I could see what was coming, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. Parliament tabled a document demanding Galas cease all her meddling, and rescind the edicts that had broken centuries of tradition. She refused. The war... I think no one really believed it would happen, or that it was happening, until it came to visit one's own town or relatives. I believed. I ran. To stand and fight... well, she lost. She's probably dead by now. I wish I knew, that's all."

Jordan could have told him, but a new caution, perhaps learned from his experience with the Boros', made him hold his tongue.

They made camp near the etched outlines of vanished buildings and streets. Jordan sized up the place in spare glances while he got the fire going and tended to the horses. Tamsin sat listlessly on the back step of the wagon, watching the men work.

Jordan knew that in his country, a small town might contain a handful of buildings made of stone, and dozens of wooden houses. The wooden structures would make no permanent impression on the land after they were torn down or burned. Stone buildings left a kind of scar, and it was these that patterned a rise near the end of the lake. If there were ten wooden houses to every stone, and every house held eight people, then half a thousand people had lived here once.

Suneil confirmed it. "It was a border town once. They traded with Memnonis. But the Winds razed it to the ground, four hundred years ago."

"Why?"

"They use this place." Suneil gestured to the lake. "It's a transfer point, or something. Don't really know. Anyway, they won't let people build here."

The thought made Jordan uneasy. Since the clouds and their threat of rain had vanished, after dinner he walked down to the edge of the lake. Using his new talent, he listened for the presence of the Winds.

The water was perfectly clear, the bottom covered in a fine yellow sand with red streaks in it. He remembered someone telling him once that clear water was unhealthy for any lake or river outside mountain country. Dark waters held life, that was the rule. He dipped his hand in it, marvelling. This was only the second lake he had seen up close. The water laughed quietly along the shore, and the flat vista glittered hypnotically in late daylight. It was surprisingly peaceful.

He could hear the song of the lake. It was deep and powerful, belying the tranquility of the surface. Thin grass grew here, but the soil beneath his feet was shallow, quickly giving way to sand. Below that... rock? He couldn't quite make it out, though it felt like there was something else down there, a unique presence deep below the earth.

There was no indication that anything supernatural dwelt here.

He sat down, mind empty for the first time in days, and watched the water for a while. Gradually, without really trying, he began hearing the voices of the waves.

They trilled like little birds as they approached the shore. Each had its own name, but otherwise they were impossible to tell apart. They rolled humming towards Jordan, then fell silent without fanfare as they licked the sand. It was like solid music converging on him where he sat. He had never heard anything so beautiful or delicately fragile.

He didn't even notice the failing light or the cold as he sat transfixed. His mind could not remain focussed forever, though, and after a while he made up a little game, trying to follow individual waves with both his eyes and his inner sense.

He tried to follow the eddies of a particular wave as it broke around a nearby rock, and in doing so discovered something new. It seemed like such an innocent detail at first: as the wave split, so did its voice. From one, it became many, then each tinier individuality vanished in turbulence. As they did, they cried out, not it seemed in fright, but in tones almost of... delight. Urgent delight—as if at the last second they had discovered something important they needed to tell the world.

If he closed his eyes, now, he could see the waves and the lake, finely outlined as in an etching, grey on black. Many words and numbers hovered over the ghost-landscape, joined by lines or what looked like arrows to faintly sketched features of the shoreline or lake surface. If he focussed on one of those, it instantly expanded, and he was surrounded by a swirl of numbers: charts, mathematical figures, geometric shapes. It was beautiful, and nonsensical.

The most important part of it, he decided, was that this ghostly vision apparently let him see with his eyes closed. Was this how Calandria May had seen the forest when she lured him away from the path, so many nights ago?

He stared at the wavelets, listening down the chain of nested identities: lake, swell, wave, crest and ripple. Each sang its identity only for so long as it existed. In water, consciousness arose and vanished, merged and split as freely as the medium itself.

Jordan had been raised to think of himself and other people as having souls. Souls were indivisible. What he heard happening out in the lake were voices that could not possibly be attached to souls, because the very identities behind those voices freely changed, merged, and nested inside one another. Even the word beings couldn't be applied to them, because it implied a stability impossible for them.

"What are you?" he whispered, staring out at the lake of voices.

I am water.

Over the next hour Jordan asked a few halting questions of the lake, the sand and the stones. Few of the answers made any sense. For the most part he sat with his head tilted, listening to voices only he could hear. If Tamsin or Suneil crept up to watch and sadly shake their heads, he didn't care, because he had taken a great secret by the edge, and he wasn't going to let anything stop him from grasping it entirely.

When he finally dragged himself back to camp, the others were asleep. Suneil had offered to let him sleep in the wagon tonight, but Jordan was too tired to make the effort, and saw no point in disturbing them. He rolled himself near the fire, and fell instantly asleep.

He dreamed about dolphins, which he had heard of but never seen. In the dream they swam in the earth itself, and leapt and splashed in it as though it were a liquid. He chased them across a rough, rocky landscape and at times he almost caught them, but they laughed as they danced just out of reach. Finally he made one last effort and dove after one as it entered the ground, and he followed it into dark liquid earth. He slid among the rocks and sinews of the solid world with perfect ease, knowing now where the dolphins were going: to find a secret buried deep in the earth.

He woke up. He lay on his back by the cold embers of the fire, and it seemed like some sound hovered above him. Someone had spoken.

Jordan rolled over. It was early morning, and fantastically misty. It looked like the camp had been put inside a pearl. Directly overhead, it was bright; at the horizons dark still reigned. There was no sound at all now. The mist absorbed everything, causing him to cough hesitantly to check that he could hear at all.

As Jordan sat stoking the fire, Tamsin emerged from the wagon. She was dressed in woolen trousers, several layered white shirts and something she had yesterday told him was called a poncho. She looked around once, and a big grin split her face. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and it utterly transformed her. She became at once ugly and electrically exuberant when she smiled.

"It's great!" She waved at the mist. "I've never seen it so thick. I'm going to go see what the lake looks like."

"Okay."

She walked purposefully into the directionless grey, stopping when she had become a two-dimensional shape against it.

"Mr. Mason?" Her voice sounded timid; there were no echoes, and no other sound.

"Yes?"

"You can come too, if you want." Jordan shook his head and followed. He was cold and achy, but he knew the walk would warm him faster than sitting by the fire.

"How are you feeling?" he asked Tamsin.

"Good." She stopped and massaged her shin. "Still hurts, but it's okay to walk on." The wagon vanished behind them, but the fire remained a diffuse orange landmark.

As they walked on, he tried to think of something more to say. For some reason, his mind had gone blank. Tamsin seemed to be having the same problem. She walked with her hands behind her back, head down except at intervals when she made a show of peering through the fog.

The low grey lines of the ruins coalesced ahead of them. Tamsin stood on a low wall that once must have supported a large house. She raised her arms, making the mauve poncho fall into a broad crescent covering her torso.

"Your uncle's not used to travelling," Jordan observed.

"He was a cloth merchant back home," she said. Tamsin lowered her arms and stepped down. "He was really rich, I think. Before the war. When he had to leave home, he took some of his best cloth. We've been selling it to buy food and stuff. But we're all out of it now."

"Did you live with him before?"

She shook her head. He wanted to ask her about her family, but could think of no way to do it.

"He saved me. When... the war came to my town, the soldiers were burning everything. It was a surprise attack. I was trying to get home, but the soldiers were in the way. Uncle... he appeared out of nowhere and took me away. He saved my life." She shrugged. "That's all."

"Oh." They walked on.

"Thanks," she said suddenly.

"For what?"

"For coming with us. For helping out." She hesitated, then added, "and for putting up with me."

Jordan found he was smiling. She walked a few steps away, her face and form softened by mist. She was looking away from him.

"You uncle told me you had a tragedy very recently," he said as gently as he could. "It's understandable."

"It'll be all right, though," she said a bit too brightly. "When we get to Rhiene Uncle is going to introduce me to society there. There'll be balls, and dinners, and the rest of that. So you see, I'm ready to take up a new life now. Uncle is helping me do that."

"That's good," he said cautiously.

She took a deep breath. "My foot feels a lot better."

"Good. But you shouldn't use it too much yet."

They took a faint path down a long slope to a pebbled beach. The sound of the waves was strangely hushed here.

A vast translucent canopy of light hung over the lake now, and in the heart of it... Jordan and Tamsin stopped on the shoreline, staring. Impossibly high in the air, a crescent of gold and rose as broad as the lake burned in the morning sun. The crescent outlined the top of a deep cloud-grey circle that seemed to be punched in the mist overhanging the water. Jordan could see a long, nearly horizontal tunnel of shadow stretching to infinity behind the thing.

The sense of free happiness Jordan had felt only moments ago collapsed. He backed away, hearing his own breath roaring in his ears, and aware that Tamsin was saying something, but unable to focus on what.

The vagabond moon was utterly motionless, its keel mere meters above the wave tops. There was no way to know how long it had been here, though it must have arrived sometime after Jordan had fallen asleep.

Tamsin stared up at it with her mouth open. "It's a moon," she said. "A real moon."

"Hush," he said. "We shouldn't be here."

"This... was this what destroyed the..."

"The Boros household." Jordan nodded, looking up, and up, at the kilometer of curving tessellated hull above them. The thing was so broad that its bottom seemed flat above the wavetops; only by tracking the eye along the curve for many meters could he begin to see the curve, and then its dimensions nearly vanished in the fog before the circle began to close. If not for the sun making its top incandescent, he could almost have missed its presence, simply because it was too large to take in without turning one's head and thinking about what one was seeing.

The important question was what was going on under its keel. Nothing, apparently; there was no open mouth there now, no gantried arms reaching for the shoreline.

Whatever reason it had for being here, it must not have to do with Jordan. It could have plucked him from his bedroll at any time during the night, after all.

The fog was lifting, but it didn't occur to Jordan that this would make him more visible. He had no doubt the thing could see through night, fog or smoke to find him, if it chose to.

"It's beautiful," she said after a minute in which the moon remained perfectly motionless. "What's it doing here?"

"It looks like it's waiting for something." The skin on the back of his neck prickled. Could it be waiting for reinforcements? No, that was silly. Jordan was no threat to this behemoth. It didn't know he was here; he kept telling himself that, even as he fought to slow his racing heart.

"Uncle said he heard the one that attacked the Boros household was looking for someone," said Tamsin.

"Really?" Jordan felt his face grow hot. "I hadn't heard that."

The rising sun slanted into the interior of the vagabond moon, and the entire shape seemed to catch fire. From a diffuse amber center, colors and intricate crosshatched shadows spread to a perimeter of gaudy rainbow highlights that glittered like jewelry on the moon's skin. That was ice, Jordan realized, frosted on the upper canopy so high above. It must be cold up there.

A faint cracking sound reached his ears. At the same time, he saw a tiny cascade of white tumble from the sunlit side of its hull. The falling cloud grew quickly into a torrent of ice and snow that struck the water with a sound like distant applause.

"Maybe we should leave," said Tamsin.

He nodded. He was afraid, but he wished he didn't have to be. The vagabond moon was so achingly beautiful, the way wolves and other wild things were. How he wanted to make peace with such beautiful, dangerous creatures.

I could speak to it, he realized. A mad idea; its wrath would descend on him for sure then.

"Let's go." Tamsin took his hand.

"Wait." He shook himself, stumbling over the words he wanted to say, to express what he was feeling. Then he thought about what Calandria had told him about the Winds, and his awe deepened even further.

"We made that," he whispered.

Neither said anything more as they walked back to the camp.

They arrived to find Suneil frantically hitching the horses. They didn't speak, but fell to decamping alongside him. It was nice to have Tamsin's help this time, since she knew where everything went. As they worked, each would pause now and then to stare at the gigantic sphere standing over the lake. Now that the sunlight was filling it, it was beginning to slowly rise.

The other two seemed increasingly frightened, but Jordan was calm, more so as the mist burned off completely, leaving them exposed to the gaze of the Wind. It had no interest in him; unlike Tamsin and her uncle, he was certain that today at least it was no threat. So when he paused, it was to admire it rather than to worry.

The road led along the edge of the lake, under the shadow of the moon. Suneil wanted to go the other way, backtracking until it was safe. Jordan did his best to calm the old man, and eventually convinced him to go forward. Still, he couldn't shake a feeling of unease as they passed beneath the now sky-blue wall of the moon. Maybe it hadn't acted because there was no way he could escape; when he got too far away, it might just waft after him and pick him up.

They were about two kilometers down the curve of the lake, just starting to relax, when thunder roared behind them. This is it, thought Jordan, and turned to look.

The clamshell doors on the bottom of the vagabond moon had opened. What must be thousands of tonnes of reddish gravel and boulders were tumbling into the lake, raising foaming whitecaps in a widening ring. As he watched, the waves reached the shore and erased the distant thread of footsteps he and Tamsin had left in the sand. The water washed up the hillside nearly to the ruins, and receded only when the last of the stones had trickled into the water.

Lightning played around the crown of the moon. It began to rise, and in a few minutes it had become a coin-sized disk at the zenith. The nervous horses trotted on, and no one spoke.

19

Armiger closed his hand over Megan's breast. She smiled at the touch, and lay back on the satin.

One candle burned outside their canopy bed. Its light turned her skin deep gold. He slid his fingertips along her collarbone, and kissed her belly lightly. Her stomach undulated from the touch. "Mm," she murmured. "You are becoming a better lover every time, you know that?"

He grinned at her, but said nothing. Feeling strong tonight, he had conjured fresh strawberries, and crushed a few over her chest as sauce. He could still taste it, a bit.

He had told her that the strawberries came from the queen's private garden. Megan would have been upset to know he was wasting his precious energies on an indulgence.

She wrapped her legs around him when he came up to breathe, and ground against him. They both laughed, ending the sound with a deep kiss. Then he entered her, for the third time this evening.

Night breezes flapped the curtains; this was the only sound other than their own. Some part of him was amazed at the quiet, but then he had never been under siege before. Perhaps silence was the inevitable response to being trapped for so long. It was the silence of waiting.

She watched as he came, then drew him down next to her. "I'm done," she said. "You finished me off!"

He was still panting. "Um," was all he managed. Megan laughed.

For a few hours at a time, he could exchange Armiger the engine for Armiger the man. At moments like this, he knew he treasured such times. He also knew that in a minute or an hour, cold rationality would steal over him, like a settling dew, both bringing him back to his deeply treasured Self, and driving out the warmth Megan made him feel.

Spontaneously, he hugged her tightly. She gasped.

"What is it?"

"Nothing." For a few moments he couldn't bring himself to let go. When he did, he flopped back, staring at the embroidered canopy. It was one of the few pieces of bedding in the palace that had not been shredded for the thousand and one needs of a military occupation: bandages, lashing broken spars together, enshrouding the dead. The queen, he thought idly, was unfair; she would never make a decent general if she wasn't consistent with her sacrifices.

"No, what?"

He blinked. Whatever he had been feeling, it was gone already. "I don't know," he whispered.

"What don't you know?" She propped herself up on her elbow, peering at him in the faint richness of candlelight.

Armiger waved a hand vaguely. "Who I am," he said at last, "at times like these."

"Yourself," she said. Megan put a hand on his chest. "You're yourself." She looked away. "It's practically the only time."

He smelled strawberries. Strange; he barely remembered doing that. Something was slipping away, moment by moment. He remembered other evenings with her, when after turning away from her he had felt instead that something returned to him.

To forestall the change, he rolled on his side, putting his nose to hers. "Am I that cold?"

"Not right now."

He ran his hand up her flank. "Why do you stay with me, then? I don't know how to please you..."

"What do you think you've been doing the last three hours?"

"Ah." But he didn't know what he'd been doing. Something that felt to the body exactly like rage had taken him over—but it was the opposite of rage in the things it made him do, and in the purity of the release it gave. Rage he understood. Armiger had come lately to identify it as the single emotion he could recall from his time subsumed into the greater identity of the god 3340. Whether that rage was the god's or his, who could tell? There was no way to know, any more than he could distinguish where his own consciousness had left off, and that of 3340 began.

This, like nearly everything about himself, he could never hope to explain to Megan.

She shook him by the shoulder. "Stop it!"

"Hum?"

"You're thinking again! It's the middle of the night. You don't have to be thinking now."

"Ah." He chuckled, and cupped her breast. "I'm sorry. But I'm not sleepy."

"You don't really sleep anyway." She yawned extravagantly. "But I need to."

"Go ahead. I'll read." He nodded to the gigantic stack of books by the bed.

She laughed, and lay back. For a while he watched the jumbled heap of hair snuggle itself deeper into the pillows. Then she said, almost inaudibly, "Which do you prefer?"

Armiger leaned over her and kissed her cheek. "Which what do I prefer?"

"Do you prefer making love, or reading?" He voice held a teasing note, but he had learned there were frequently hidden needs behind her teasing questions.

"To read is to make love to the world," he said. "But to make love to a woman is to feel like the world is reading you."

She smiled, not comprehending, and fell asleep.

Leaving Armiger the man behind, or so he imagined, he stood to dress. Freed from the need for dialogue, his mind fell in upon itself, and the myriad other sides of Armiger the god awoke.

All night, as he made love to Megan, these other sides of his Self had been thinking, planning, raging and debating in the higher echoes of his consciousness. He had read sixteen books yesterday, and had been revising his opinions about Ventus and the Winds as he assimilated the knowledge. Now he stood for several minutes, fingers touching the leather cover of the next volume he intended to absorb. He was not so much contemplating as watching the vast edifice of his understanding of Ventus shift, and settle, and grow new entranceways and wings.

He had discovered something: the Winds were not mad. They were up to something.

Armiger cursed softly. He no longer saw the candle flame, or felt the hard cover of the book. For it was all there in the histories and philosophical inquiries, if one knew how to read the signs. The Winds acted capriciously, but everyone knew they ultimately acted in the interests of Nature. They were the guides of the terraforming process, he knew. Terraforming a planet was neither a quick process nor one that had an end. The climate of Ventus would never achieve equilibrium; without the constant intervention of the planet's ruling spirits, the air would cool and the oxygen/carbon cycles oscillate out of control. The world would experience alternate phases of hyperoxygenation and asphyxiation, coupled with disastrous atmospheric circulation locks; parts of the globe would be under almost constant rain, others would never receive rain at all. Everything would die, in the long run.

The Winds exercised great intelligence and forbearance. They played the clouds and ocean waves of Ventus like the most grand and complex instruments. Their symphonic teamwork was perfect.

So: capricious they might be, but the Winds were not purposeless. Everyone on and off Ventus knew this. When it came to dealing with other intelligent entities, however, they did at first seem mad. The histories he had been reading, which were more extensive than those available offworld, told of massacres and blessings, following no apparent pattern, which the poor human residents of this world had struggled for centuries to justify and predict. The accepted theory was that they viewed human activity as an assault on the ecosystem, and acted to defend it. Armiger had read enough by now to know that it simply wasn't so.

Throughout the history of the world, men and women had appeared who claimed to be able to communicate with the Winds. Sometimes they were hanged as witches. Sometimes they were able to prove their claims, and then they founded religions.

The Winds were difficult entities to worship, because they had the annoying characteristic of possessing minds of their own. Gods, one philosophical wag had commented, should conveniently remain on the altar, rather than rampaging indiscriminately across the land.

The Winds were utterly inconsistent about enforcing their ecological rules where it came to Man. He had seen it himself; there were smelters in some of the larger towns, pouring black smoke into the atmosphere, while the tiny waft of sulphur dioxide he had used in chemical warfare in one battle had cost Armiger his entire army. The Winds had obliterated every man involved in the engagement. Armiger had stood helplessly on the crown of the hill where he was directing his troops, and watched as they all died.

He had felt nothing at the time. Remembering now, he suppressed an urge to pick up the book he touched, and throw it through the window.

Something was going on here. The Winds were neither malicious, nor mad, nor were they indifferent to humanity. They were obeying some tangle of rules he simply hadn't seen yet. If he could find out what it was...

Something made him turn. There was no one in the room, and Megan hadn't moved. Nonetheless, he sensed someone nearby.

A woman was weeping out in the hallway.

Armiger dressed, then blew out the candle, which itself had been an extravagance. In his time here he had heard more weeping than laughter. There was nothing unusual in it. But without knowing exactly why, he found himself walking hesitantly to the door.

It opened soundlessly onto a pitch-dark hallway. There were windows at either end of the corridor, but they didn't illuminate, only served as contrast to the blackness within.

For a moment Armiger stood blind as any man, surprised at the helplessness of the sensation. Then he remembered to slide the frequency of his vision up and down until he found a wavelength in which he could see. A few months ago, that action would have been automatic. He scowled as he looked around for the source of the sound.

The woman was huddled on the floor halfway down the hall. She cradled something in her lap. An infant, perhaps? Armiger opened his mouth to speak, then thought better. He cleared his throat.

She started visibly and looked up. "Who's there?" Her head bobbed back and forth as she tried to see. She was middle-aged, matronly, dressed in a peasant frock. Strange that she should be in this part of the palace... no, perhaps it was stranger that these halls hadn't yet been turned into a barracks.

"I heard you," he said. "Are you injured?"

It was what he would have asked a man. He didn't know what to ask when a woman cried. But she nodded. "My arm," she whimpered, nodding down at it. "Broken." As if the admission cost her more than the injury, she began to cry all the harder.

"Has it been seen to?" He knelt beside her.

"No!"

"Let me see." He gently reached to touch her elbow. She winced. Feeling his way, he found the break, a clean one, in the tibia. The bones had slid apart slightly, and would have to be set. He told her this.

"Can you do it?"

"Yes." She had a tattered shawl draped over her shoulders. "I'll use this to immobilize it. Just a moment." He needed something for a splint. The furniture had been completely stripped out of here, but the walls were wood, with a good deal of ornamental panelling and stripping. Armiger found a beveled edge to one of the panels, and with several quick jerks, pulled the wood strip away from the wall. It groaned like a lost soul as it came. He broke it over his knee and returned to the woman.

He didn't warn her before taking her forearm and pulling it straight. She yelped, but it was all over before she had time to tense or really feel the pain. Armiger aligned the stripping with her wristbones and wrapped it quickly with strips from her shawl. Then he bound the whole assembly in a sling about her neck.

"Why wasn't it set earlier?" From the swelling, he judged she had broken it earlier in the day.

"I shouldn't be here," she said.

"That's not what I asked."

"Yes, it is you see because the soldiers, they, some of them are hurt, so bad, and there's not enough people to tend them. I, I went there, but one man, his stomach was open, and he was dying but they wouldn't leave him, and another his eyes were burned somehow. And I stood at the doorway and they were all hurt so badly, I, I couldn't go in there with just my silly broken arm. I couldn't..." She wept, clutching him with her good hand.

What Armiger said he said not to comfort her, but because he had observed this in human men: "But the soldiers would have gladly given up their beds to a woman."

"Yes, and I hate them for it." She pushed him away. "It's the arrogance of men that leads them to sacrifice themselves. Not real consideration."

Armiger sat back, confused. "How did you get in here?" he asked at last.

"I'm a friend of one of the maids. She offered to shelter me when, when the soldiers came. I... I didn't know where to go, I couldn't go back and tell her I didn't go into the infirmary. I had nowhere to go."

He knew the room next to his was vacant. "Come." He lifted her to her feet and guided her to it. There was enough light here to make out the canopied bed and dressers, and fine gilded curtains.

"I can't sleep here." Her voice held shock.

"You will."

"But in the morning—if the queen finds out—"

"If they ask, tell them Armiger authorized it. Sleep well." Without another word, he closed the door. His last glimpse was of her standing uncertainly in the center of the room.

For a long time he stood, arms folded. He heard her climb on the bed at last. Only then did he turn and walk to the stairs.

A stable had been taken over to house the infirmary. Despite the lateness of the hour, it was far from quiet as Armiger walked in. Men groaned or wept openly. In a curtained alcove, someone screamed every few seconds—short gasps of unremitting agony. No one else could sleep with that going on, though a good number of men lay very still on the straw, their eyes closed, their chests rising and falling shallowly.

There were twenty men and women here tending the injured. They looked like none of them had slept in days.

These wounded were merely the casualties from the withdrawal of Galas's hillside defenses. When Lavin stormed the walls this stable would oveflow.

Actually, it would burn, he thought as he walked along the rows of men, appraising their injuries.

"Are you looking for someone?"

He turned to find a red-eyed man in bloodstained jester's gear watching him from a side table. The table was strewn with bottles and medical instruments. The man's arms were brown up to the elbows with old blood.

"I can help," said Armiger.

"Are you trained?"

"Yes." He knew the human body well, and he could see inside it if he wished. Armiger had never tried healing before.

"It's hard," said the jester.

"I know." Armiger had realized, however, that the same lack of empathy that allowed him to send a squad of young men to certain death for tactical reasons, would allow him to act and make decisions to save them, where other men's compassion would paralyze them.

He nodded toward the curtained alcove. "What is his problem."

The jester ran a hand through his hair. "Shattered pelvis," he said briefly.

Armiger thought about it. "I'll take a look." He glanced around. "First though, let's see the others."

The jester led, and Armiger moved down the rows of men, and performed triage.

Near dawn, Galas stood watching from the window in her bed chamber. Behind her were the carven trees and fauna of a fantastical woodland scene. It was no regular pattern of pillars cunningly disguised, nor a frescoed wall carven and layered with images; the architect had denied the privilege of rectilinear space here. Like a real forest, the lower boughs obscured vision and prevented movement between different parts of the chamber, and the great roots of the stone trees sprawled across the floor with no regard for the cult of the level surface. There was no order to the staggered forms, nor any symmetry save the aesthetic, which made this room into a group of bowers inside the straight-edged castle tower.

The window itself looked like a gap in the foliage of a jade-carved hedge. Each tiny leaf had been faithfully reproduced in stone, and in daylight they shone with a verdant brilliance that would normally soothe the queen's heart.

She had seldom been here in the day. As she traced the outline of a leaf with the tip of one finger, she knew she might never have the time to be, now. Odd that the possibility of never seeing this window in daylight again, should be what now struck her with the horror of her coming death.

She thought about the strange Wind, Maut, as she sat by the window to watch the moon set. He was letting her look straight into the labyrinth of eternity, at the moment when death was inevitable and imminent. She hated him for that.

She turned to her maid, Ninete, who sat slumped on a divan nearby. Ninete was required to remain awake as long as Galas, and tonight the queen had not slept at all. "He knows there is nothing I can say to him," said Galas intensely. Ninete was startled at being addressed as a person; she said nothing in reply.

Galas fixed her gaze on the maid. "He is cruel, to put it plainly. Why is he telling me these things? I know he is only telling the truth. It is that which is so terrible. He is telling the truth. As to things which should properly be lied about."

Ninete recovered herself. "Let me comb out your hair," she said. The Queen rose with a nod and went to her dressing table. Ninete stood behind her and began letting down her hair into dark waves which tumbled down her back.

"Perhaps he thinks it really will not hurt me to know my whole life has been lived in vain. I wanted to change things, that was what ruled me. I wanted to change what could not be changed, what had never been seen as anything but absolute. I wanted to dissolve the absolute. Maut... Maut, says this has been done before.

"I knew that everything now absolute was once a phantasy. What is good was once evil. He is unaware how devastating such a realization is to human beings. In fact, he's not really bothering to speak of that. He takes it as a starting point. Takes it as given that this upheaval which has been my life is like the dance of dust-motes in sunlight—just an alternation, and change in height of those motes in the galaxy of relations visible to us. He neglects that I am such a mote myself..."

Bothered, Ninete combed silently. In the mirror Galas could see her uncomprehending look. "We could die in two days," she said.

"I know," says Ninete simply. Galas waited for more, but it didn't come.

"Aren't you afraid?"

"My Queen, I'm terrified." Ninete's expression shifted from the neutral silence it had held to an ashen tautness. Her lips thinned, her eyes lost their focus. "I don't want to die now."

Queen Galas looked at her, her own eyes taking on a certain coldness Ninete had seen so frequently in them. But Galas's hand trembles as it searched among the combs, hairpins, pots of makeup on the dressing table.

"You don't want to die. But you understand what death is."

"The soldiers will kill us, Lady. I've seen people die."

"Resume." Ninete brought the brush up again. "Ninete, you will die a good death. You see death so simply. Death to you is the General's men storming the castle. It is missiles from the air, swords, vindictive rape and humiliation. Most of all never to see those you love again, never again to hold those talks, to make love... You understand death, you have studied it the way all folk do, and for your understanding you have recourse to the religious teachings, the rituals, the tragic lovers in stories. You understand it, in the lyricism of fear you have been taught."

Galas's hand hovered over this comb, that pin, uncertainly. "I don't understand it at all. I don't see those lovers, I cannot imagine the body laid in its tomb, those somber brown poems... they don't speak to me. Death says nothing to me. I wish it did. I wish I could see what was going to happen to me, two, three days hence.

"Maut is himself death, but he can't tell me." She turned to look up into Ninete's face. "He refuses to make it into a sign for me. That is what is so cruel."

Her hand descended on a long golden hairpin. "Ninete, leave me! Work on my breakfast. See it is the best you have ever orchestrated. I have no need of you now."

Sullen, Ninete left. Galas watched the emotions play across her shoulders, down her hips as she walked. Ninete read even this rejection like a scene in some traditional play, Galas saw. She had been sent away. And just when she was hearing the Queen's heart speak.

Clutching the pin, she rose and went to the window. A stone bird watched from the carven boughs above her head.

"Where is this coming from," she asked, staring at the tremble in her hand. What she had been saying just now made no sense to her. Her fear made no sense. She was angry with Maut, but did not know why. Her mind swung round and round the things he had talked about today. Behind his words she sensed a kind of...bewilderment in him, as though the engine of human speech remained incapable of rendering his experience to her, however precise the mind of the god that powered it.

Nothing explained her fury just now, however, not even the General's campfires in the valley outside. In fact, they were rather beautiful...

She raised the long pin, and stabbed it into her left shoulder. The pain pulled her to her feet—she hissed and pulled the pin out, casting it furiously out the window.

There it was, the agony of terror and fury. It came boiling up from some hidden source inside her, taking form in blinding tears, as she curled around herself, holding her shoulder. She tried to escape the pain, turning, turning, but it moved with her. Slumping onto a stone root, she began to cry in great gusts. There it was: confusion, chaos. She wanted to run, run anywhere, and it was her body that was telling her this. Run, escape.

Her body was afraid, it was her body which was speaking in her anger at Maut, and in her fear of death. She had been neglecting it, living in her understanding and within that realm she had just accused Ninete of inhabiting: the realm of the story. How could she fail to see in her mind's eye, the riders coming through the gate, the expressions on her people's faces as they ran from her, to join the other side... It was the story of her death she had been telling herself, even as she tried to listen to Maut, tried to see his images, his life.

She could no more escape into his life than she could bring her death to herself here, now, by her worry.

She watched the line of blood move down her breast. The pain was intense. She revelled in it, for with it the phantasms of the day after tomorrow had fled, and Maut's story was mere words again.

In tears, the wonder of despair and release welled from her with the blood. She remembered that once, she had loved her life.

Afraid that Ninete would hear her and come running, Galas put her head out the window. She let herself cry out, once, then hung her head.

"Your highness?"

The voice came from below. She blinked away tears, and looked down the battlement fifteen feet below. A man stood there, his form outlined in the silver, rose and black of predawn light. It was Maut.

She cleared her throat. "Are you sleepless too?" Her words sounded unsteady, frightening to herself.

"Yes." He seemed cool as the night air, as always. "I was helping in the infirmary."

"Really?" Galas wiped at her eyes. "How are my men?"

"Holding up bravely."

"And you?"

He didn't answer, but turned to look out over the courtyards of the palace.

"Maut," she said on impulse, "join me in my chamber."

His silhouette nodded. He vanished from sight like a ghost, and she pulled herself inside, wincing.

First, she must bandage herself. Galas tore a piece of embroidered linen and wrapped her wound clumsily. Then she selected a high-necked black gown and wove herself into it. Without a maid to help, she couldn't do up the back. So she sat back on the divan, feeling the cool velvet against her back. The sensation set her skin tingling.

She gnawed her thumbnail, a habit her mother had never cured her of, and waited.

Presently there came a polite tap on the door. "Enter," she said.

Maut's hair was disheveled, and faint lines were etched around his eyes and between his brows. He had discarded his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white blouse. He nodded to her like an intimate, and sat on the chair near her bed. She glimpsed Ninete peeking around the edge of the door, and waved her off impatiently. The door slid closed.

Neither spoke for a while. Outside, she heard the first voicing of a morning bird.

"Will you join me for breakfast?" she said at last.

"I would be honored."

"No, Maut. Don't say that. Will you?"

He smiled wanly. "I would like to, yes."

"Good." She gestured impatiently. "I have no more time for ceremony."

Maut drew up one knee and clasped his hands around it, like a boy. He could only look more at home, she thought, if he sat sideways in the chair.

He cocked his head and looked at her appraisingly. "Ceremony has never suited you, has it?"

She laughed shortly. "No. It's only familiarity that gets me through it. The words come automatically. Even if they're so often like ashes in my mouth."

"I find it hard to believe that this alone is the root of your passion. Because your passion radiates from some deep source. It catches up everyone around you. That's why they follow you, you know. Not because you're queen."

"Ah." This was a compliment she had never heard before. "I'm sure you know my story. Am I not the scandal of the kingdom?"

He shrugged. "I've heard things. They were obvious distortions. I came to you because I wanted to hear the story from the source."

"Why?"

He considered, staring out at the amber sky. "I have been reading the books in your library. They all point to something... a mystery. I mean a mystery in the religious sense, almost. A meaning. When I came here I thought I was after facts, but now I see I'm after more than that. I want answers."

"You? The man whose very mind is an impregnable fortress of history?" She laughed. "You astonish me."

Serious, he said, "In the bits and pieces of your story that I've heard, I catch echoes of that mystery. I believe you know more than you realize. You have wisdom you have hidden from yourself."

"And can you show me this wisdom?" Her hands trembled, as they had in the garden when his messenger fluttered down to land on her knee.

"I don't know."

"You toy with me!" She had leaned forward in anger, and felt the folds of her dress fall apart at her back. Galas sat back again quickly.

"No."

"And what will you give me in return for my story? I think I no longer wish to hear your own tale."

He looked at her for a long moment. Something like a smile danced around his lips. Galas found her heart racing at his examination, and her eyes traced the muscles in his arms, the set of his shoulders.

Then he did smile, rather impishly. "I should be very much surprised if you do not have the answer to that question by noon," was all he said.

"Well."

Maut leaned forward, the weariness returned to his eyes. "Tell me your story," he said.

Galas closed her eyes. In her life, only one other had asked her for this—not the story, but her story. Grief choked her momentarily.

"All right. I shall try to tell it as a tale—as I've often wanted to. I... I pictured myself sometimes, setting my child on my knee and telling it. There will be no child. But here is the story."

20

First, you must understand that I was considered mad as a child, even as I am today. The reasons were not the same, however—in my childhood it was my sense of justice which went against me. I treated peasants and servants with the same respect as kings and princes, and this evoked great ire in my mother, with whom I warred constantly. She strove to impress upon me the war between classes and the divine rightness of this war. It was not that I sided with the lesser people against my own—which however reprehensible would mave made sense to her—it was that I saw no difference whatever between us.

And then, when I was twelve summers old, that thing happened without which I might have grown up to become an ordinary princess—ha! Yes, there is such a thing.

You see, my father kept a book—as his predecessor had, and all the kings back into antiquity. This book contained various proclamations of the Winds made over the centuries, along with interpretations and auguries. And it came to pass that the unusual weather of the springtime and a disastrous fire in Belfonre matched some of the auguries in the book, and the only interpretation that my father and his wise men could make of the augury was that the queen must die.

In later years I came to understand that this was a pretext—he had his eye on another woman, who in time he married. She turned out to be barren, but he was not to admit the fact for many years. Anyway, at the time, I understood nothing, save that the Winds had commanded the death of my mother.

I was in the gardens with my favorite duenna when word came of the arrest of my mother. My duenna immediately burst into tears, falling on her knees before me and clutching at my skirt. She being older had grasped immediately what was occurring but I had yet to. We had been idly discussing some aspect of human nature, its rigidity I believe, which she took for granted and I in my young zeal rejected absolutely. "Nothing in us is fixed", I had pouted. My mother's execution was now fixed, however, and this duenna cried out, "Oh Princess, your youth is forever gone now! Where is the young girl I played with in these summer gardens? Soon you will be an embittered woman with revenge against life driving you. You will cease to laugh, you will weep at life, and you will send me away for reminding you of times lost now when you could be happy!"

"Lady, this is no sense in your words", I said to her. I could feel the emotions overspilling around, the shaking of the messenger, the crying of my older friend, and saw how the windows that opened on the gardens were closing, one after another, shutting inside the airs of grief. For that moment I was the only calm stone in the rising flood. I shall not be carried away, I resolved. In moments all that the messenger and the duenna were possessed by would strike out to possess me—their human nature, of the same order, I felt, as the artificial distinctions between class which even they supported.

It was a moment of supreme mystery. How could the brightness of the flowers, the coolth of the air, my own happiness be so swept away by an event that was, now rumor, later merely fact against which I could do nothing? I loved my mother, and knew that would never change, whatever happened. I looked into the future and saw myself weeping alone in my bedroom, and it was as a figure from a drama that I saw myself, moving to commands issued by some forgotten playwright. I felt a certainty at that moment that it was so, that my duenna's shock, my coming grief were roles cast for us by someone, someone great far in the past. I could be other than grief-stricken, if I chose. I could go mad, in other words.

I chose to go mad. In that moment I decided that although I could not change the fate of my mother, there was no law immutable in the heavens that decreed how I was to react to it. Only much, much later in life can I look back and see that whether I knew it or not, I was under the sway of an emotion then: fury, which I swallowed so deeply that I was unable to experience it until... oh, very recently.

"Come," I said to the duenna. "Rise, and let us practise a while on our dulcimers. The day is still fair, and the next ones will not be." She looked at me with a new horror in her eyes, and I knew I was lost. I wondered what was to come of it, now that I was no longer playing my role in the drama begun by my father.

He was terrified of me from then on. The servants treated me with gentle respect, as one does the mad. They knew I was so overtaken with grief—although I did not witness my mother's execution, and I had seen her a few afternoons a week since I was a babe, never for more than a few hours at a time—that I could no longer feel anything. The king, however, believed I was training myself in hate, keeping inside me a desire for revenge that was willing to wait. He thought perhaps that I would kill him in his dotage, when he could not raise a hand to defend himself. As I grew toward womanhood, he began to look for ways to dispose of me. For I was sunny and cheerful, I claimed to forgive him for slaying my mother, and I was gracious to his new queen. I harbored no instinct for revenge, in fact; on that day when I was told of my mother's arrest I had embarked on a great journey, which I am on to this day, and there was nothing but gratitude in my heart for being given the opportunity to be alive, and yet to have left the human race behind me.

They danced around me as I daydreamed, the figures of all those storied lovers, traitors, thieves and kings and saints and I saw them all as actors even to themselves. If there was a human nature it lay buried far below such inventions as grief and love, so I was sure, and the daring of this vista intoxicated my youth.

I was not expected to become scholarly as I am, for I was a woman. I decided not to believe there was any difference between man and woman, so had tutors hired. The indulgence was given, for my father's auguries said nothing about how to treat the mad, so I was allowed to do what others could not.

Oh I could be charming, and as subtle in my understanding as any scheming courtier—more so, since I was learning the true bounds of human nature. As I grew however my desires became less and less those of the girl I had been, became quite estranged from court and all the ambitions that ruled there. For I saw through those too.

At times, I do not deny it, I was indeed mad, locking myself in my tower and singing to the owls. I would lie upon my bed for days staring at the ceiling, bereft of purpose or understanding and at times weeping over what was lost: grief itself was lost to me, and love and the innocence of romance. Handsome princes and true love meant nothing to me on the journey I had undertaken, but they were believed in by all about me. I longed for an understanding that was no longer possible from these people. Of all those at court it was still the servants and lowly laborers whom I loved the best, for they loved me. They knew I was not mad, but daring in a way even kings were not. The poor have no love of roles, and so they appear callous even with their own; they can love better than we, though, for they are honest in what they do feel. They saw I had in an instant rejected the whole world in which I was brought up, if it led to senseless death and thence to fixed orbits for all involved forever. Too, I championed their causes to the king, and was often indulged by him when no other suitor would succeed.

At length he, noticing my unwomanly interest in sciences and historical studies, hit upon a means of disposing of me. If I would be a scholar, he would give me full reign to be one. In fact, he would allow me to command an expedition then being mounted by the University of Rhiene to measure seismic changes caused by the deep movement of the desals.

The desals occasionally set off thermonuclear charges deep in the mountains, or in ocean trenches. For as long as records are extant, the Winds had been conducting such explosions, one or two a century at different places. Traditionally, we have forbidden any mining in the region affected for ten years after the blast, after which we let people dig as they wish. When they do, rich mineral or metal finds are always the result. I knew from my studies that the explosions were not solitary, but vast coordinated chains set off to drive precious materials closer to the surface of the earth, for our benefit. It is but one of the services that the Winds perform for us.

—Yes, Maut, they do serve us. They simply do not realize it. If you let me continue, you will understand what I mean.

I well knew my father's intent. He wished me far away from him, politically powerless, and demonstrably unmarriageable. I simply did not care what his plans were. I acquiesced to his proposal for reasons of my own. In truth, I was eager to see new lands and to experience life as a man would for at least a time. I indulged myself as men did. I remember on the day appointed for sailing I sauntered down to the docks in leather breeches and a man's tunic, a heavy chest across my back containing all my scientific instruments and books, two fluttering duennas at my side unprepared for ocean life and unsure what to make of my new turn.

The hereditary scholars from the university were even less pleased to see me. They regarded my presence as an imposition—quite rightly—and myself as a scandal. They made it plain to me from the moment I stepped on deck that I would receive no aid from them, that they would obey none of my orders nor in any serious way consider me the leader of the expedition. I found it impossible to reason with them.

This was perhaps the first time since childhood that I had not been indulged instantly in my desires. I was furious and stormed down to my cabin. I believe I fumed for all of six hours before I realized that once again, I was reacting to form. What kind of reaction should I have expected from these men? They were shrewd in the maintenance of their positions and knew nothing about the composition of the real world; I was already aware of that. Why should their rejections surprise me?

I had been romanticizing, hoping that here at least there might be people to understand me. Had I expected to be able to pursue those studies I intended with these men? Surely not; for what concerned me, they had no head. So I laughed and resolved to make the best of it. This proved hard, as they chose to be cruel in the following days.

I do not know how things would have gone had we not had the good fortune to be wrecked. In order to test the extent of the explosion's effect, we had sailed far out along a chain of islands leading into the blank ocean. We were to reach one in particular, a U-shaped isle that supposedly represented the end of the archipelago, and plant our seismographs there. It was to be the journey of a week. On the third day, just after I had been ejected from the mess for eating with the sailors—they had invited me, and tradition be hanged I had agreed—I was seething at the bow as far from the captain and his supercilious mate as I could get when a squall came up. It nearly heeled the ship on its side, but that was only the presage of a worse storm that now loomed up over the horizon, black and terrible. I was bade go below, and refused until the captain lost patience and had me carried down.

As I pounded on my cabin door the storm hit. For hours I think we were tumbled about like matchsticks in a pocket. My duennas were ill and panicked. I chased my chest of instruments as it slid from side to side of the cabin. As night fell the ship gave a strange shudder, and I heard the sailors shouting that we'd hit a rock. Where we had been driven I did not know, but the hold was filling rapidly and the captain, unable to control the ship, determined to save himself.

There was a single longboat, and he commandeered it, with his mate and a few of their cronies. He had no concern for me, princess though I was, for he well understood my father's intent in sending me on this expedition. There would be no brave knight to save me. My duennas clung to their embroidered cushions and refused to move. I forced open the cabin door and made for the deck.

The crew had realized their captain was abandoning them. Under savage skies, with blue light roving along the masts, and sails and lines lashing free like whips, they mobbed by one rail with every kind of weapon and tool in their hands, fighting to get to the longboat which was now over the side but not yet cut free. I stood in the door under the madly turning wheel and watched as they killed one another. The line was suddenly cut and the boat began to heave away and those left at the rail dove for it in their frenzy to escape what they were certain was a doomed ship.

In moments the deck was vacant save for the dead, who with strange animation slid from rail to rail. The longboat vanished behind enormous waves. Alone save for my cowering maids, I and the doomed ship drove into the open ocean.

The rock we had hit was part of an out-thrust of the archipelago few navigators knew of. It lay in a direction no sane man had need to venture. But before the ship could sink, it was driven aground. In the terrible light of the storm the coast we were upon was visible only as a jumble of black shards. My duennas refused to leave the familiarity of the cabin even though the deck tossed under them as the ship bucked to free itself from the rocks that held it. I cursed them for fools and, binding my long hair behind me and taking a knife and matches, climbed out along the foremast and leapt into the dark.

I awoke to a fine morning. I was above the tide, half buried in the sand. As I sat up and looked out at the sad wreckage of the ship, I wept. I did not pause to think why now, with no human audience, I did this. The ship was submerged save for its masts, which tilted each in a different direction. No one clung to them; I was certain my maids had perished in the storm.

As I sat up I left an indentation of my own shape in the wet sand. My hair tugged, refusing to be freed from its entanglement in the earth. It was woven with seaweed and knotted terribly. I took the knife and cut it short then stood gingerly. I was not hurt; I had swum strongly and quickly to shore, but could find no way to climb from this sandy reach up to the land above. I now looked closely for such a way and finally spying it, dragged myself up to a grassy area fronting deep forest.

It soon became evident I was not to be alone with the wrack.

Sallow men emerged from the forest, and I, backed to the edge of the low cliff, had no escape. They had been attracted by the sight of the wreck and proceeded to loot it, while I, tied to a log and guarded by an old man, watched.

These men were dressed in an odd parody of my homeland's style. They wore breeches, but they were put together with many small skins; evidently there were no cattle on this island. Their shirts were of similar make, with a kind of armor made with cane woven through them. They seemed to lack metal. They certainly lacked refinement.

After enthusiastically diving and swimming about the wreck, and fighting on the shore over what they found, they pulled me to my feet and marched off along a slight path that led through the woods. They were comparing their prizes: one had a fish gaff, another a belaying pin, while a third had somehow prised loose the ship's wheel and lugged it over his shoulder. They had puzzled over my instruments and finally kept them only because they were metal and light enough to carry. They spoke this language, albeit roughly and with a truly criminal accent. I took them to be shipwrecked pirates or the descendants of same, while they took me to be a boy.

I might have thought my virtue, if not my life, to be safe in this misapprehension, but some leered at me despite. I endeavored to be dumb so they should not hear my voice, and also so that, if they took me to be foreign and unlearned of their tongue, they might speak more freely among themselves.

In the event I doubt they would have thought of caution. They argued happily over their prizes and discussed how they should hide the best part from the priests who apparently ruled over them. My strategy set, I could not inquire further about these priests, but my curiosity was aroused. These people were apparently indulging in the sort of idolatry outlawed in lands such as my own, albeit it thrives under the ban. In short, they worshipped the desals.

What they knew of the desals in such a backwards spot I could not guess, although I was soon to learn and to wonder at my own ignorance. They took me to a slapshod village where they pulled my hair a great deal and showed me about, the more injudicious boasting of the great treasures in the wreck so that most of the population of the town immediately ran to claim their share. I was then taken to a finer house where their priests lived.

The priests emerged—muddy tattered men with gaunt faces. I was paraded again before the six of them and they discussed my fate, I meanwhile striving to learn as much as possible by looking about myself and listening. I spied in the darkened door of their house a woman, much cleaner, haughty of appearance and finely dressed in beads and what seemed jewelry. She was in turn appraising me. I could not fathom what was in her eyes, but her gaze was piercing.

It was decided to imprison me until my origin and possible use could be learned. I was steered away to a tumbled-down shack at the edge of the village. This had but one entrance and was built into a hillside. Thrown into the claustrophobic darkness, I watched the crude wooden door shut with mingled despair and bemusement at my suddenly fallen state. I dithered over whether to reveal myself as a woman and claim my frailty required kinder treatment, but abstained as I discovered I had a companion in this prison.

He was an old man, as eccentric as myself, whom the others had gotten tired of and disposed of here. His first words to me, and I shall never forget them, were, "Do you like the forks with the long tines, or the forks with the short tines?"

I considered that question carefully before I answered. After all, our friendship might rest on my answer. At length I said, "I do prefer a fork with long tines, as one can be more delicate with it."

He was delighted. He pumped my hand and introduced himself, then in uninterrupted monologue spent the rest of the day describing himself, this place, and his situation. I had no need to interrupt him, as he anticipated all my questions or spoke in such encyclopedic detail that I had no need to speak.

This place was indeed a settlement of abandoned pirates. This crowd had no shipbuilding skills—in fact, no skills at all aside from scavenging. They had a few women and after nearly thirty years here were making themselves a community.

When they arrived they had found the island already inhabited, by a very small group who it seemed were descended from a previous lot of castaways. This first group was dying out, apparently because they were persecuted by a Wind.

This astonished me. There was in fact a desal on the island. I was later to learn there were even desals on the ocean floor and it seems under the perpetual glaciers in the northern and southern poles. Their actions are always mysterious. This one had taken it upon itself to kill people at random since before living memory. When it did not kill, it would render men and women sterile.

With the arrival of these new castaways, it seems to have changed its behavior slightly. It ceased killing, but now it would permit no women near itself, save one at a time of its choosing. This the arrivals and the indigenes together took as a sign of religious importance. The arrival of the new people was taken as a blessing and they were welcomed with open arms. A new order was established whereby a woman was chosen to be the medium for the desal. No person could approach it save under her protection.

My curiosity about the desal's method of killing was satisfied when the old man told me of the miasmic clouds and strange diseases that spread out from its location. Desals do not move as such, as you may know, although some have agents to fulfil their will. This one had no such agents but relied on a preternatural sensitivity to wind and other currents. It poisoned from afar.

The people had learned to interpret it through their medium. It was chiefly interested in domestic matters, marriage and inheritance. This struck me as extremely odd, but I attributed it to the desal actually being silent, and the priestess relying on her own judgement to rule local affairs.

Desals, like all Winds, are not mute. They have been known to act spontaneously, even to speak, but usually what they say is incoherent, or totally irrelevant to human interests. I believed these people to be ruled by their superstitions regarding the thing, more than by its real actions.

The next day I was let out of my prison and told I was the property of one of the men who had first come upon me. I was to help him with his farming—gardening, rather, as he had not the skill to grow more than a few roots and berry bushes. I acquiesced.

This could not go on, however. I had no intention of being a slave here. If I could in no ways escape, I resolved to rule and to turn these savages into people more amenable to civilization. There was a great deal I could teach them. I began with my gardener, showing him the benefits of planting two kinds of crops together so they should fortify one another, keeping pests away and enriching one another's roots. While I did this I wondered how I might come to control the community.

They still took me for a young man. I spoke little, and contrived to remain at least somewhat grimy—not that this was hard due to the gardening—to hide the softness of my skin. As I was so mistaken, I began to notice the young women of the community casting glances in my direction. This gave me an idea.

I remembered the look their priestess had sent me and now realized what it had meant. Although she was little seen I would contrive to be seen by her. Too I knew it was approaching the day appointed by the desal to explode its nuclear charge underneath the mainland. I was not sure, but hoped there would be some effect felt here.

I was able to ascertain that this woman was very superstitious, believing in her role as mediator to the Wind. I let myself be visible to her, and when she cast a look I cast back. We were separated by her requirement to remain at all times in the priest's house, or to be at the desal, but this to me was an advantage.

Having some freedom, more so as I instructed my master and he saw more profit to be had in my good will, I managed to dally several days in a row behind the priest's house, making my desire clear to the priestess as she sat by her window. As the day dawned when the Wind would cause its explosion, I rose early and crept up to the house. Tapping lightly on her shutter until she opened it, I made myself known to her. She at once invited me in but I balked, whispering about the old men who kept her here. What if they should discover us?

She nodded, frustrated. The stricture that she remain here or at the Wind was, she said, merely a ruse by means of which the old men kept her for themselves. She had never had the attentions of a young man and wanted them a great deal. She at once agreed when I suggested she retire to consult with the desal that evening, and meet me in the woods.

I had no idea what to expect. Tradition said the Wind killed all women who came within its bounds, save for the particular one it chose as mediator. I believed this to be a superstition, but one I could use. I worked hard that day so that my master could find no fault with me, and when he gave me my leave to go I gathered up my knife and the matches and headed for the woods.

As night was falling she appeared, walking hesitantly into the woods, perfumed in her finest. I appeared on the path before her and bowed, but as she rushed to me I withdrew, saying we were too close to the town, I was afraid of discovery. It was, after all, a small island.

She agreed, but where could we go? There was one place, I advanced, where no one else would go, where in fact no one else was safe. The desal.

She demurred. The idea of having relations in her own shrine appalled her. I however was not to be put off and with a few caresses and murmured entreaties, let her chase me deeper into the woods, until we were close upon the desal itself. Then I renewed my requests. By now she would in no ways refuse me.

We approached the desal as the sun set behind it. It looked as most desals look: a wide expanse of white stone-like material, sloping upwards over many meters to a spire that rose nearly fifty meters above the surrounding forest. Smaller spires stood sentinel around the outskirts of the paving. Forest had made inroads onto it, but only so far. Past the sentinel spires the material was clean and clear of debris, even pebbles. Most of the desals appear this way, whether they be sunken in a lake, on a mountain top, or (as in eastern lands) at the center of a city.

Their chief discriminating feature is the faint etching on their surface: rectangles, octagons or other shapes, always in different configuration. These lines represent openings or at least potential openings. Some will open themselves in response to particular conditions; others may be opened by enterprising human beings, if they possess the cleverness or technology to do so. In Iapysia we are always studying the desals with an eye to opening all their doors, but it is always an occasion when one is unlocked. Then too the doors sometimes close again, and can not afterwards be opened by any means.

It has always been this way. The desals predate our earliest records, and those stretch back a thousand years. They seem to stem from the very beginning of the world. We do not know what their origin is, although I believe you know. How could you not know? You are older than even they, you say.

They have guided us in the development of our civilization. As I outlined, they find minerals for us, and also cure plagues and have been known to cultivate new breeds of plants for our food. We take these as gifts. They are given us out of those doors, when men or women with courage enter to find what they might. Each door typically reveals one thing, but some have walls upon which frescoes and other symbolic expressions appear. It is by these that they communicate.

As I said, they sometimes employ agents. A door may be seen to open at the apex of a spire, and a flock of birds issue from it. Or night beasts may nest in opened doors too small for human ingress. The Winds minister to more than Man, we know this. Those cultures that worship them claim they are the creators of this world and everything in it. The Winds deny this. Although they deny, they do not enlighten us as to their real nature, beyond the simple statement that they are exactly what they appear to be. They are themselves, they are Winds.

As the priestess clasped my hand and drew me onto the blank white plain, I half-expected to be immediately struck down. The Wind's misogyny might not be just a legend. I was not killed however and took heart, even laughing and running with her as I spied the hexagonal opening she aimed at.

It was about two meters across, opening just where the slope of the Wind became too steep to climb. I paused for just a moment to look back, and found myself level with the tree tops, the entire island spread out below. Only a glimpse was allowed me, as I was yanked in by the priestess.

She embraced me right there, but I struggled free and lit a match. She pouted, standing very close, and let me look around. This room was like another I had seen in my own country, round and with domed ceiling and floor, about ten meters across. In the center of the floor was a raised pillar with an open top. I went down to the pillar and gazed into the opening. A black fathomlessness. Who knew what might emerge from it? It was no wonder it bred religious awe in these people.

"Come." She was very insistent now, taking hold of my arm to draw me down beside her. I was out of time.

I stepped back, around the other side of the open dais. Lighting another match and applying it to a small torch I had brought, I said to her, "I am sorry to have deceived you, lady, but it was commanded of me."

"Commanded?" She stood up. "What are you talking about?"

"I am not as I appear. I am not from the wrecked ship." This statement halted her as she began to come around the dais. She instead moved to put it between us again. She looked her question at me.

The hour was right. I nodded to her. "You have served the desal well. I do not doubt you have taken pride in it, but I also know you wish sometimes you were ordinary, living with the others with a husband, maybe children?"

"Where are you from?" she whispered, eyes wide in the shaking light.

I lay down the torch and unlaced my jerkin, showing her my breasts. "I am as you. I am here and alive. The Wind has chosen me as your successor." I was certain I could handle those old men who had ruled her. They would be the first to go once I was in command. I smiled. "You are free."

"No! This is some cheap trick." Her desire was extinguished, but she was angry now. I had anticipated that.

"We knew you would not believe easily, which is good", I said. "You were not chosen to be gullible. This being the case, however, do you need a demonstration that what I say is true?"

She nodded guardedly.

"Good. We shall have one." If the demonstration was not forthcoming, I might be forced to murder this girl if we could not work out our differences. I would then simply await the priests here in the morning, and take over from her that way. I had no stomach for that method, however, and counted on the fact that when one desal acts, all others within a hundred kilometers react.

We did not have to wait long. First there was a faint thumping below our feet. The girl cried out and backed away from the open dais. Although I had been expecting something, I was now very afraid. There is no knowing what a Wind may do.

Suddenly there was a violent shudder through the bedrock-solid desal. Outside a gale blew up from nowhere, and we heard trees cracking and leaves roaring. A faint white glow ensconced the top of a sentinel spire visible through the doorway.

She screamed. "Stop it, please! I believe!"

"All right," I said although in truth I had no idea how or if this manifestation would cease.

Then the door closed.

She and I bolted for it in one motion, I waving the torch as though it were a talisman to open it again. There was no sign that there had ever been a door there, save for half a windblown stick that had been caught as it closed, and snipped through. We looked at one another, she realizing at last that I had no more control over the desal than she did.

The dais in the center of the floor suddenly dropped out of sight, leaving a black hole. The floor of the desal distorted, lowered to form a funnel. There was nothing to hang onto. First she with a despairing cry, then I slid down and into that dark opening.

I opened my eyes on a strange vision. I was at the bottom of a well that was three meters across, its top invisible in darkness. The bottom was curved, of the same slick white substance as above, but soft. Around me on the walls of the tube strange images were appearing and vanishing, like moving frescoes.

I cried and tried not to watch, hiding my face in my hands, but I was afraid of I knew not what. I felt compelled to look around myself, at least to look up in case something came down that well at me. I imagined all kinds of terrors from above—giant pistons, water, or monstrous arms lowering to retrieve me. Nothing occurred, except the ongoing panoply unfolding on the walls around me. I could not for long avoid looking at the moving pictures.

Hypnotized, I watched a pictographic catalogue of the world unfold. Sketchy images of thousands of things rolled forward and back. The images were whirling towards some apocalyptic conclusion. The dizzying motion and flickering lights became too much for me. I thrust out my hand and cried, "Stop!"

My open palm slammed against the wall. Miraculously, the pictographs I had struck froze in place, as if painted. The rest continued to move around this sudden little island.

I snatched my hand back. The pictographs remained motionless.

Had the priestess seen what I was seeing? Perhaps this was how the desal had chosen its ministers in the past. I could well imagine those other women cowering as I did, watching in incomprehension as the pictures flew by—maybe to be ejected later by the desal into the arms of waiting awestruck people. The villagers would have demanded to know what the pictures meant. It would be as if you were given a book in an unknown language, and threatened with death unless you explained its meaning.

Maybe none of those other women had the courage or anger to try to touch the pictures. Then they would never have learned that they could stop them, or as I learned in the next minutes, move them.

First I reached out to tap hesitantly at another pictograph. It stopped instantly. Emboldened, I tried a few more. Soon I had a little set of rocks in a moving stream of imagery. Each one seemed significant—a tree, a cloud, a castle, a house. Most were pictures from nature, but there were men and women too, though these were oddly dressed. How? Well, chiefly as though their clothes had been painted on. Some had sunburst halos around their heads, and packs on their backs. Most such pictographs had a backdrop of blackness and stars.

One image that I tapped seemed to stagger as it stopped. I tapped it again and it jittered in place. I touched my finger to the wall and slowly drew it along. To my amazement the pictograph followed.

It probably wouldn't be possible for someone in such a position to avoid organizing the pictographs. Even just on the aesthetic level it made sense to group them, so that I could see them all without having to turn around. Soon I had ten or so of the things lined up in front of me. The rest were still whirling around, but they were less fearful now that I knew I could control them.

I immediately made another discovery. If two or more images overlapped they would both flash for a few seconds, then disappear, replaced by new ones.

These new images were the reply of the desal.

You see, when I moved the pictograph fish on top of a snaking river, row after row of fish shapes sprang into being on the wall above me. I recognized a few I had eaten or seen drawn in picture books. When I drew the pictograph of a carp onto that of an eye, I found myself looking at a very detailed drawing of a carp's eye, complete with little lines of text over and under it, written using our alphabet but in a language I did not recognize.

I became very excited. Quite possibly I would never emerge from this place, but it almost didn't matter. For long hours, until thirst and exhaustion overwhelmed me, I arranged images and watched as the desal replied.

I awoke half-delirious with thirst. The desire for water consumed me, and for a while I shouted and banged the walls, half-convinced that some human agency waited beyond them. There was no reply.

There were a number of representations of water on the walls. I dragged animal and raindrop together. The pictographs vanished, then reappeared without change. This happened, I had come to believe, when the desal did not understand the question.

I put a skull, a human shape and an image of the sun together. Again, nothing. This went on for quite a while, but I was doggedly determined, since thirst is not a need you can ignore. I can't remember the exact combination that worked, but suddenly I heard a clanking sound overhead and when I looked up, received a faceful of ice water.

When the downpour stopped I was up to my knees in it. Still, I was grateful. More, I felt a triumphal glow. After all, I had spoken to a Wind, asked a favor of it, and been given it.

The other women were probably ejected after they failed to grasp that the desal wanted to talk. Myself it kept, as several days passed and I became fluent in its strange visual speech. There did not seem to be anything it would not tell me—provided I knew how to ask. That was the most frustrating part, because I wanted to know its history, and that of my people; I wanted to know where the world had come from, and where it was going. My imagination failed utterly when it came to phrasing such questions in stick-figures and glyphs.

But I could make the desal act for me. I insisted on sun until the top of the shaft vanished, and daylight poured down on me. I demanded that my wastes be carried away, and the floor swallowed them as I slept. I requested food, and received fruit and berries.

Two things I learned, that made me the queen of Iapysia. The first was that I could paint my own images and freeze them on the wall. The second thing I discovered was a trove of information about the desals themselves.

This I came upon when I slapped a little whirling globe and it flattened out into a map of the world. The continents were clear, and I soon had my own nation spread before me, with intricate colors and shapes showing landforms and vegetation. I have never since seen anything like it. It was dotted with tiny dome-glyphs, which I at first took to be cities. They were in all the wrong places, though, and eventually I realized they were desals.

They were joined by fine lines, in a kind of spiderweb. The desals are joined by a subterranean highway system, something tradition says is true, but for which we had no proof. Now I could see it. And I could see the road that linked my desal to others on the mainland.

I had painted a portrait of myself, and now an inspiration struck me. I dragged that portrait to the island on the map where I thought I was. The portrait vanished and reappeared in miniature next to the little dome figure there. The desal had told me I was correct. That was the island I was on.

Next I dragged the little portrait of myself onto the line of the highway running under the sea between the island and the mainland. Instantly the portrait slid out from under my fingers, and zipped along the highway to wait flashing at the dome of a mainland desal.

I touched the portrait. It stopped flashing.

And something overhead blocked the sun as a deep rumbling sound began to build around me.

I had time to issue one more detailed command before the floor gave way under my feet and I fell into the dark cyclonic stream of the highway.

I awoke with sunlight heating my face. I heard murmurs of wonder and fear. Opening my eyes, I saw the faces of my own countrymen. They spoke in the accents of the province of Santel, whose city has a desal on the hill above it.

I sat up. I was in a cubic chamber, three meters on a side. A square door opened out on the sunlight; four peasants stared in at me.

They had seen a door open the previous night. The next morning they mustered courage to approach, and the townspeople, alerted, were not far behind. A crowd gathered as I climbed out of this desal, four hundred kilometers from the one I had entered days before, and faced my silent people.

On the walls of the chamber I came from were visions I had crafted with the desal's help. These indelible frescoes were arranged around the portrait of myself, the state crown of Iapysia afloat above my head. To these the desal had added its own panorama, a kind of procession that led around the entire chamber.

From that moment, when the people saw that the Winds had blessed me as queen, my succession to the throne was guaranteed.

The panorama authored by the desal, however, has a different meaning for me than it does for my people. The people believe it is a chronology of my lineage. To me it shows all the stages of humanity's development on this planet, for each scene in the panorama shows something from our history, some major turning point: the founding of religions, of dynasties, of laws and philosophies.

To me the silent figures speak of the invention of humanity: of our own creation of the faculties we take as divinely ordered, our reason, our morality, our science, even our world's purpose. They are all, I believe, of our own generation.

If there is anything I wonder now, it is this: if we are our own creation, whence the Winds? I do not understand them, and they frighten me.

Of all things, they alone frighten me.

Galas was sipping a glass of chilled wine, a bowl of fruit before her on the highest parapet of the palace, when general Mattias stormed in. The leader of her defenses was normally in a foul humour—but just now he was positively livid. A small group of men and maids trailed behind him like wind-whipped smoke. "Why didn't you tell me?" he roared at the queen as he towered over her.

Galas had eaten breakfast with Maut after telling her tale, and although she had not slept, had been feeling strangely at peace. She blinked at Mattias muzzily. "Tell you what?"

"Who he was!"

Carefully, she reached for a raisin, and chewed it for a while before saying, "Really, Mattias, I don't know who you are talking about."

"Oh no? You've been closeted with the bastard for two days now. Am I so old and feeble I can no longer be trusted with strategic information? Or were you going to present it all to me as a done thing?"

He really was angry. At her. Galas sat up straight. "Wait, wait, something is really wrong here. Mattias, I would never do anything to question your command. What is it that you think I have done?"

"General Armiger is your guest! I just had it from the maids. And you never told me!"

For a moment Galas stared at him, open-mouthed. Then she realized, and remembered last night, when she had asked Maut what he could do for her, and he had smiled and said she would know by noon.

She looked at the sundial built into her table. It was noon.

Galas began to laugh. It started as a chuckle, but as she saw Mattias' eyes widen in outrage, she could no longer contain herself. Carelessly tossing her wine glass aside, she leaned back in her chair and let the sound of her delight rise above the siege, above the air itself, to the very heavens.

21

In the morning, Jordan awoke to hear Suneil leaving the wagon. Probably gone for a piss, he thought at first; but the man did not return.

This was just the sort of thing that kept one from falling back asleep. The sun wasn't up yet, and it was frosty out there. Jordan had already been awake half the night, listening to Queen Galas tell Armiger her tale. When she finished he had fallen into a dreamless but apparently brief sleep. Now he tried several different positions—lying on his side, on his back with an arm over his face, even curled up—but he couldn't get back to sleep and Suneil still didn't return.

Finally he rose, shivering, and crept to the back flap to look out. The horizon was polished silver, as cold a color as Jordan had ever seen.

Suneil was standing very still, staring at nothing in particular. His hands were stuffed deep in the pockets of a long woolen coat. Every now and then he looked down and kicked a clod of earth at his feet.

Jordan eased the flap back and went to lie down again. The sight had disturbed him although at first he couldn't decide why. By the time the sun peeked above the horizon and Suneil came back to salvage a last half hour of rest, Jordan had realized that he seldom seen so perfect a picture of a man struggling with an important decision; and it was significant that Suneil had said nothing in the past days to his niece or Jordan about any such worries.

In the middle of nowhere, with scattered fields to the left and right, Suneil said, "This is the city of Rhiene."

"Huh?" Jordan stared at a slovenly peasant's cottage mired in its own pigsty near the road. "That?" He had heard of Rhiene all his life. It was one of the great cities of Iapysia, fabled for its gardens and university. There was supposed to be a desal at Rhiene too, and great religious colleges devoted to its study.

Suneil laughed. They were seated together at the front of the wagon. Tamsin had decided to walk for a while, and at present she was a few meters ahead, tilting her head back and forth to some internal rhyme, her hands fluttering at her sides in time.

Suneil pointed to a tumble of low hills ahead. "There."

The hills made an odd arc on the otherwise flat plain, dwindling in either direction. None was more than twenty meters high, and now that he looked more closely Jordan could see numerous buildings dotting the farther ones, and thin trails of smoke rising beyond them. A stone tower stood near the road ahead. Traffic on the road had increased during the past day until now they were part of a steady stream of wagons, horses and walking people, all headed towards the hills. Far off to the south, he could see another such road, converging on what he was beginning to realize was a long rampart of wavelike hills.

There was no city, however. Just those scattered buildings.

"I don't understand. It's underground?"

Again Suneil laughed. "No. Well, yes, parts of it. You'll see." He smiled mysteriously.

They followed the road around several bends. The land here looked as though it had become liquid at some time in the ancient past, and flown in waves that had then frozen in place. Giant boulders stuck up from the earth here and there; they seemed barely weathered.

Several side roads joined with theirs, until the stream of traffic was thick and loud. Vendors appeared walking up the road, offering sweet meats and fresh fish. Still there was no city in sight—but now Jordan heard seagulls, and saw several lift above the next rise.

The builders of Rhiene had wisely widened the road after that rise, because a good half of all the travellers who came here must have stopped dead in their tracks when they got there. Tamsin did, and Jordan stood up and shouted in disbelief. Suneil merely smiled.

First he saw the blue-hazed arc of a distant shoreline, and above that sun-whitened cliffs rising almost straight out of the glittering water. Then his eye took in the whole sweep of the place: those distant cliffs were kin to the crest their wagon had come to. In fact, the cliffs swept in a vast circle to encompass a deep flat-bottomed bowl in the earth. A lake filled most of the bowl; from here Jordan could see sailboats like tiny scraps of white feather dotting it. At the very center of the bowl, a spire of green-patched rock towered out of the water. Coral-colored buildings adorned the spire. He could see docks at its base.

"Rhiene," said Suneil, pointing down.

The road wound down a set of switchbacks into what at first looked like an overgrown ruin. Rhiene was green with ivy, forest and lichen, and Jordan couldn't make out the buildings until he realized the gardens he saw were all on the roofs of houses and towers. Rhiene sprawled along the arc of the cliff for kilometers in either direction, and tongues of jetty and wharf made the nearer shore of the lake into a tangle of geometry.

Seeing this made everything that had happened to him worthwhile. Jordan knew he was grinning like an idiot, but he didn't care. He decided in that instant that Rhiene was where he wanted to live.

"It's the most beautiful place in the world!" shouted Tamsin.

"Perhaps you would like a guided tour?" said a nattily dressed young man who had appeared as if by magic at her elbow.

Tamsin looked him up and down. "Begone, you trotting swine," she said.

The youth shrugged and walked away. Astonished, Jordan leapt down and went over to Tamsin.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

"Everybody wants to make some coin," she said. "Everywhere we go there's people trying to sell you this or that." She sighed heavily. "They hang around places like this, spoiling the moment for people like us." The young man had approached another wagon, and appeared to be haggling with its oafish driver.

Suneil had clucked the horses into motion, so they began to walk. "'Trotting swine'?" asked Jordan.

She blushed. "I read it in a book."

They walked for a while, taking in the gradually expanding view. Tamsin said little more, but she didn't seem to mind Jordan's company either. After a while Jordan dropped back to the wagon and asked Suneil, "What will you do here?".

The old man nodded to the city, which now spread around and above them. "I've got some old business associates here," he said. "I want to see if I can call in some favours, and make a new start. The war's over, after all."

"Is this where you used to live?"

"No. That's one of the advantages of the place," said Suneil ruefully.

Jordan had a vivid idea of what a city at war would look like, based on what he had seen at the queen's summer palace. Clear as that notion might be, he couldn't picture soldiers in the streets of Rhiene. For all that it was a big city, it appeared sleepy and its citizens unconcerned. It took Tamsin to point out the placards here and there that were signed with a royal insignia. Jordan couldn't read the script, so she translated. "It's a decree from Parliament ending curfew and random searches. I guess the war really is over."

"It's not," he said. "The queen is still fighting back. She's trapped in the summer palace, but she's got plenty of supplies and her people are still loyal."

Tamsin looked at him strangely. "I see. You arranged this? Or a little bird told you?"

"I have my sources."

"Oh ho," she said. "Behold the grand seer."

"Hey!" Suneil waved at them from the cart. "We go this way."

They passed through high stone walls into a teeming caravansary. Here were soldiers—plenty of them—inspecting the cargoes of incoming wagons. While they went through Suneil's possessions—with Tamsin squawking protests—Jordan took a look around. The place was just a broad quadrangle of pulverized straw with a few water troughs and sheds. It reeked of manure and wood smoke. All the visitors to the city who had no inn or friend to visit were crammed in here. They squabbled over cart space, water and offal buckets. It was wonderful chaos.

The queen had mentioned Rhiene in her story last night. Her tale had not enlightened him much as to the nature of the Winds. There was something to it, though, as of a mystery whose solution hung just out of reach. He had thought about it a lot, and was sure Armiger felt that sense of near-knowledge too; unless the general had already seen the answer Jordan himself could not.

He thought about this as he helped Suneil get the wagon slotted into a narrow space near one wall. Jordan went to find water and feed for the horses, and when he returned Suneil had changed into fine silk clothes.

"I'm going to visit my people," he said. "Are you leaving us here, young man?"

Jordan shrugged. "With your permission I'll stay the night and make a fresh start in the morning."

"Good. You see to my niece. I'll be back before dark."

"Can we see the city?" asked Tamsin.

"If you'd like. Just don't get lost."

He left with a spring in his step. Jordan turned to Tamsin.

"How's your ankle?"

"Good."

"Up for some walking?"

She held out her hand, smiling. "Lead on, sir."

Rhiene was much bigger than it seemed from above, and much dirtier too. The everpresent foliage hid a great deal, and Jordan supposed that was part of the idea. The overriding purpose for the greenery, however, was to keep the Winds at bay.

An ancient statue near the docks showed a man and woman raising their hands to the sky, holding flowering branches. Tamsin read off the plaque at the base of the statue. "The city was destroyed by the desal seven hundred years ago," she said. "They rebuilt in secrecy, using wood harvested without killing trees. They struck a balance between creation and destruction, and the Winds let them continue to this day."

"There's supposed to be a desal here," said Jordan. The statue stood in a busy square surrounded by ivied merchants' houses. The city sprawled for kilometers in either direction, a fact visible from here because this square was emplaced on a knee of land that thrust out of the cliff wall. The cliff itself towered majestically above, and the vast sweep of it to either side was intoxicating.

"There is a desal," said Tamsin. "I saw it on the way down."

"Where is it?" He wasn't sure whether he wanted to visit it or not, after what Galas had said about them. Knowing where it was, though, he would be able to avoid it.

"You can see it from here." She stepped up on the plinth of the statue. "See?"

He followed the line of her arm. There was something out in the bay, offset slightly from a line he might have drawn to join the city to the spire at the lake's center. From here it was visible only as a set of white spikes thrusting from the surface of the water. There were no boats near it, so judging its size wasn't easy.

"I recognized it because we had one near where I grew up," she said. "My father took me to see it once, when I was young. That one stood alone in the desert, like it was abandoned, but he said it was alive, and we shouldn't get too close. It's strange to see one underwater."

"Well, at least it's not in the city," he said.

"Hey, get off that!" shouted a passing woman. Tamsin jumped down from the statue's base. A few heads turned, but no one else stopped them as they ran down the hill to the docks.

In stories Jordan had read, a city's docks was always the place where lowlife sailors and prostitutes waited to prey on travellers and lost children. He had always pictured the wharves of a seagoing city as full of one-eyed men with swords and nasty dispositions, with bodies in the alleys and kegs of wine rolling down from visiting ships.

Rhiene was not like that. Of course, it was an inland port; most of the traffic here came from barges that simply shuttled between the city and the far end of the lake, a distance large enough to cut a day or so off the travel time of wagons coming from the south. There was supposedly a river that emptied into the lake somewhere, and boats went up that too, but not, apparently, pirate ships. The docks were clean and well kept, and other than one disciplined work gang unloading a shallow single-masted ship, there was no great activity.

"This is pretty stale," said Tamsin. "Let's find the marketplace."

"There might be more than one," he pointed out.

"Whatever."

They wandered in the crowds for a while, and though Tamsin looked quite blasé about it all, Jordan felt overwhelmed by the huge press of people. Hundreds visible at any time, and around every corner there was a new hundred. Most of the people in sight were dressed similarly, men in fashionable townsman's jackets, the women in long pleated dresses that swept the road gracefully. He had to conclude that they all lived here. Could he live in such a place, with so many neighbors?

For a while they stood at the gates of the University of Rhiene, gazing at the sun-dappled grounds and ivied buildings. Queen Galas had walked here, he thought, and knowing this suddenly made her seem real in a new way. They had shared something, Jordan and Galas, if only the fact of having stood here.

In a flux of troubled emotions, he let himself be swept along by Tamsin, until they came to a market.

If Jordan had thought there were many people in the streets, this place was as crowded as Castor's during a wedding, only the mob went on and on, dividing and subdividing into alleys and sidestreets. Lean-tos and carts stood along all the walls, and some enterprising men and women had simply laid their goods out on blankets in the street. A roar of voices welled from the press of people, animals, and running children. Smells of incense, manure, fresh-cut wood and hot iron filled Jordan's head, making him dizzy.

Tamsin laughed. "This is the place! See, Jordan, this is the place to be in Rhiene!" She ducked into the press.

"Wait!" Shaking his head but grinning, he ran after her.

The chaos had an infectious energy to it. You could not walk slowly in this place. After a few minutes, Jordan found himself darting around like Tamsin, poking about on tables of turquoise baubles, then flitting over to a fruit seller, nearly stumbling over a one-legged woman selling cloth dolls from her mat—wishing he had more than the few coins in his pockets.

The only problem was, the roar of voices tended to trigger his visions. Every now and then Jordan had to stop and shake his head, because he would hear Armiger's voice coming at him from within his own skull, or that of a doctor with whom the general was speaking. Such moments no longer frightened him, but they made it hard to concentrate on the here and now.

Then, in the very middle of the market, he was stopped in his tracks by another voice that rang sudden and clear in his mind:

"Go to the woman with the brown knapsack. Tell me what's inside it."

"What?" He looked around, blinking.

"I didn't say anything," said Tamsin. "Oh, look. A magician."

There he was—a lean, well-groomed man standing on a little stage at the back of a short alley. A large audience stood in silence, listening as he recited something. His eyes were closed, and he had one hand touched dramatically to his forehead.

A young woman in peasant's garb emerged from the audience. She went hesitantly up to stand beside the magician, and at his urging, opened the pack she'd been carrying. As she displayed each of the items inside, murmurs then applause ran through the audience. Shortly thereafter a small rain of coins landed at the magician's feet.

Jordan and Tamsin watched for a while. The magician was guessing the contents of people's bags, pockets or just what they held in their clenched fists. He was always right. The crowd was amazed, and all too willing to pay to watch the performance continue.

Every time the magician was presented with a puzzle, Jordan heard something no one else seemed to hear. This man had the same power Turcaret had possessed, a limited power to speak with the Winds—or at least with mecha. When Jordan concentrated he could see, almost as if he were imagining it, something like a diaphanous butterfly hovering above the crowd. When the magician commanded it, the invisible thing wafted over to the satchel, bag, case or box, and penetrated its surface with fine hairlike antennae. Almost like a mosquito, he thought.

Jordan's heart was pounding with an excitement he had not felt since he had sat by the lakeshore and learned how the waves spoke. There was no trick to what this man was doing; Jordan could do it. What was amazing was that the little mechal thing allowed itself to be commanded—and the Winds did not rain fury on the magician for commanding it.

"Come on, let's go," said Tamsin.

"Wait. I want to try something."

"Oh, forget it, Jordan, you'll lose your shirt. He's got the game rigged somehow."

"Yes, and I know how."

"Go to the jewelbox held by the man in green and tell me its contents," commanded the magician.

Jordan closed his eyes and, in his mind, said, "Come here."

The butterfly was clearly visible now, like a living flame over the dark absences of the crowd. It was like no mechal beast he had ever seen; it was more like a spirit. It hesitated now over the man the magician had ordered it to, then drifted in Jordan's direction. It circled his head, as though inspecting him.

"Return." It was the magician, calling his servant.

Who was the stronger here? Jordan smiled, and said, "Stay."

"Return! Return now!"

The crowd was beginning to mutter.

"Ka! Return to me at once!"

"What are you?" Jordan asked the fluttering thing.

"I am Ka. I am test probe of the Ventus terraforming infrastructure. I am a nano-fibre chassis with distributed processing and solar-powered electrostatic lift wires. I am—"

Jordan had been wondering for days what he should ask the next thing he spoke to. "Do you speak to the Heaven hooks?"

"No. I report to desal 463."

Faintly, he heard the magician announcing that today's performance was over. The crowd broke into guffaws and jeers. Someone demanded their money back.

"Jordan," hissed Tamsin. "What are you doing? Let's go?"

"Wait." Then, to Ka, he said, "Will you tell desal 463 that you spoke to me?"

"Yes."

"No, don't do that!"

"Okay."

Jordan opened his eyes. Okay?

"The show's over," said Tamsin. "Let's go."

"I'm doing something."

"No you're not. You're standing there like a slackjawed idiot. Now come on." She pulled on his arm.

"Ka, where are you! Please Ka, come back!"

"You are not empty," said Ka.

It took Jordan a moment to figure out what it meant. When Jordan closed his eyes, he could see the mecha all around him, a ghostly landscape of light. The crowd, the magician and even Tamsin were visible only as shadows, holes in the matrix.

"Am I mecha?" he asked Ka.

"You have mecha in you," it said.

"Ka!" cried the magician, aloud this time. He stood alone in the alley, hands clasped at his sides. He seemed on the verge of tears.

Jordan wanted to know more, but Tamsin was pulling at him, and he felt pity for the poor magician, who did not know what was happening. "Return to your magician," Jordan told Ka.

Ka fluttered away. A moment later Jordan opened his eyes to see the man raise one hand into the air as if caressing something. His shoulders slumped in relief, then he began swearing and looking around.

The magician's gaze fell on Jordan, and stopped. What could he do? Jordan met his eye, smiled ironically, and shrugged.

The magician recoiled as if Jordan had slapped him. Then he backed away and raised one finger to point at Jordan. "You get away from me!" he shouted. "Get away, you hear?"

"Jordan!" Tamsin shook him. "Come on!"

They ran together into the crowd, Tamsin worried, Jordan stunned with new possibilities. He wanted to ask the magician where he'd found Ka, how he had discovered he could command the thing, why the desal tolerated his manipulations of a minor Wind. Above all, Jordan wanted to know why the Winds would speak to him and this man, and no one else here.

Ah, but that's just the question Armiger came here to answer, he reminded himself. Armiger himself can't speak to the Winds.

Though they were now two streets away, he concentrated and said, "Ka, why are the Winds after me?"

The reply was faint, but he was sure Ka said, "You are not empty. So you may threaten Thalience."

That was a new name. Or had he misheard it? "Ka, who is... Thalience?"

He heard a mutter, but could not decipher it. Tamsin had dragged him to the gates of the market.

"What was all that about?" she demanded as they stepped into the quiet street. Jordan laughed, shaking his head.

"I'm not quite sure," he said. "Maybe we'd better get back to the wagon."

She gave him a long look. "Maybe you're right," she said.

Suneil was waiting for them at the wagon. He looked upset. Tamsin ran up to him and embraced him.

"How did your meeting go?"

Suneil grimaced, and disengaged himself from her arms. "I had to make some... concessions," he said. He wasn't looking at her, but glanced at Jordan, then turned away. "In business and... power... you have to do what it takes to get what you want, sometimes."

Tamsin cocked her head to one side. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing that's going to matter in the long run," he said. "When you get older, Tam, you'll understand why I made this decision. It's in our best interests."

"Tell me," she said. Jordan stood back, arms crossed, and watched. Something was very wrong here.

"You know I was an important minister in the queen's cabinet before the war," said Suneil. "That's why I had to run. Why we had to run. You were all I could salvage of the life Galas had given us—my favorite niece. Parliament went on a witch hunt—hanging everyone who was involved in our work. I did what I had to do to make sure they didn't come after us, but it was prudent to leave the country all the same. And certain men know what I did, and are willing to forget our life before—now that the queen is dead."

"The queen is not dead," said Jordan without thinking.

Suneil sat on the bottom step of the wagon's hatch, and peered at him. "You know that for a fact, don't you, young man?"

"Who cares?" said Tamsin. "What about your meeting?"

"Actually, it's very important that Jordan Mason knows with absolute certainty that Galas is alive," said Suneil. "Because my partners needed a guarantee of my loyalty to them, and if Jordan weren't the man he's pretending to be, the deal I made this afternoon wouldn't go through."

Jordan knew it in that instant. "You've sold me."

Suneil looked him in the eye. "You are a wanted man, Jordan."

"Wanted? Not by the law," said Jordan. "Only by—"

"Me."

Jordan turned. Brendan Sheia's sword hovered centimeters from his throat. The square-headed Boros heir smiled grimly as four men emerged from behind Suneil's wagon, their own blades drawn.

"Uncle!"

Suneil grabbed Tamsin by the wrist as she tried to run to Jordan. "I don't like this any more than you do," he said. "This is what we have to do to prove our worth to the new powers in Iapysia. Don't you see? We can go home now."

"Bastards! Let him go!" Tamsin struggled against her uncle.

Brendan Sheia ignored them. He was pacing around Jordan, inspecting him as one might a prize horse. "I remember you now," he said. "You were with those foreign spies at the banquet. You were sick, if I recall. Nearly spoiled dinner."

Jordan glared at him. "I've done nothing wrong."

Sheia's sword flashed up. "You brought the Heaven hooks against our house! You destroyed our ancestral home, incited the Hooks to kill my ally Turcaret, and when you were done you ran into the night, and the Hooks followed! We have it from our witnesses."

His confrontation with Turcaret in the Boros courtyard had been seen, Jordan realized. But had Axel and Calandria been arrested as well? "What about—" Sheia hit Jordan across the jaw. He staggered, and was grabbed roughly by two men and hauled to his tiptoes.

"Stop it!" screamed Tamsin.

"Silence," hissed her uncle.

Sheia bowed to Suneil. "Lucky thing you chanced on Mason, old man. You'll get your honor and your title back. I can't guarantee the money and lands, of course... but in this new age, what guarantee have we of anything?" He flipped a hand negligently at Jordan. "Take the boy."

The two soldiers holding his arms yanked Jordan into a quick-march; then they were out in the streets, and he was being thrown over the side of a horse, hands and feet bound.

The good citizens of Rhiene watched and commented, but did nothing to help as Jordan was carried away.

22

"You'll have to pardon me if I seem a bit out of sorts," said Armiger as he sat down opposite General Matthias. "I was chatting with one of your men on the battlements when a rock from one of Parliament's steam cannon took his head off."

Matthias grimaced. "I heard about that. Happened this morning. Lavin's a devil, a positive devil. And the queen admires him! That's the damndest part. Listen, I've got a little beer here from our emergency stock. Care for a cup?"

Armiger nodded. He had talked briefly with Matthias twice, but the man was understandably busy—and, it seemed, wary. It was that wariness that had made Armiger ask for this meeting; he needed Matthias on his side.

They sat in Matthias' tiny office in one of the palace's outbuildings. Outside the single small window a dismal drizzle fell on the tents of the refugees. It was oppressively quiet today.

Matthias poured two pints of pale beer and they both tasted it. Armiger noticed that his hands were shaking slightly; the incident on the wall had shocked him more than he would have believed possible. It was only a man who had been destroyed, after all. And while Armiger might have lost his own head had he been standing a meter closer, he could have grown another one, given enough time. He had no rational reason to be upset. But he was. He was.

"Lavin's an upstart," said Matthias. "Young, bright, ambitious. He's had subtle help from the queen throughout his career. And now he's turned on her. I'd take him to be an opportunist, but Galas disagrees. She says he's an arch-traditionalist."

"Have you tried to use that against him?" asked Armiger.

Matthias nodded. "Had some success too. He detests dealing with morale issues. You can trip him up if you can scare his men. He's a quick learner though—I'm afraid I taught him to press the way he is with the cannon. Never lets us sleep. You saw the result yourself."

Armiger nodded.

Matthias was watching him. "I have to say, Armiger, that you've got steady nerves. I got that impression when we were following reports of your war in the northeast. You were doing a magnificent job. Then we heard you were dead, and you turn up here. Sounded to me like you ran. Why?"

"Is that why you've been avoiding me?" asked Armiger with a smile. "Because you think I'm a deserter?"

"No, not a deserter. A mercenary." Matthias grimaced. "You show up here, offering your services to the queen... for how much?"

Armiger sat up straight. "First of all, if I were a mercenary you'd think Ravenon would have paid me. They didn't pay me—at least not in money."

"What do you mean? What did they pay you in?"

"Information. It was their mail and spy networks I was interested in using. I showed up here with nothing but the clothes on my back, you know that. And how am I expected to get away with my payment if Galas is paying me now?"

"Simple," said Matthias. "You've cut a deal with Lavin."

Armiger laughed harshly. "Your suspicion is well-founded and sound. You think I'm a Trojan horse, is that it?"

"A what horse?"

Armiger took a deep drink of his beer. "Lavin doesn't need my help to take this palace, you know that," he said. "Besides, I haven't exactly offered my services to the queen as a military commander."

"Oh? Then as what?"

"Priest. Confessor." Armiger saw the expression on Matthias' face and laughed. "Look, that man who had his head knocked off today—I've had it with that kind of thing. Why do you think I left the war in Ravenon? The Winds wiped out two divisions of my men. I stood by helpless and watched it happen. At the time I thought I didn't care; but I did. And I do. So I'm not here to fight, Matthias, you needn't worry about that."

The old general sat back in his chair, nodding slowly. "You're an odd one. And if you'd said anything other than what you just did, I wouldn't have taken you seriously. Priest? Confessor? I don't know about that. But I understand a man who lays down his sword. Men who don't have that urge now and then make bad commanders. Galas tells me Lavin has no stomach for war either—but see how good he is at it."

An adjutant knocked politely on the door. Matthias nodded and stood up.

"Now that I know where your heart lies, Armiger, I may just call up on your talents. After all, there's no better man to end a war quickly and cleanly than one who hates war."

Jordan surged to his feet with shout. He was not going to let this happen again.

He shook his head and forced himself to breathe deeply, and look around himself. He was in a small cell in the basement of Brendan Sheia' home. A single window-slit let in the wan sunset, and a trickle of cold air that teased at him, making him shiver now that he had noticed it.

They had taken his possessions, including Calandria's golden gauze. He was irrevocably visible to the Winds now.

The sights and sounds of Armiger's experience began to recede. He willed them away entirely. It didn't matter how compelling them were. It didn't matter that he wanted to fall into Armiger like a refuge, the way he had on his long walk south from the disaster of the Heaven hooks. He wished so much that he could be somewhere else right now—be someone else.

"Too bad," he said angrily. Jordan was furious with Brendan Sheia—just furious enough, for now, not to be afraid. He was also angry with himself, though, and right now that was worse.

After all, there had been a moment in his life when he thought he was going to put aside all the habits of denial and retreat that he had despised in his father. When Emmy ran into the night, Jordan had lain in bed for long moments, waiting for someone else to act responsibly and follow her. He still remembered those few seconds; something had broken in him, setting him free. And so he thought afterwards that he would never fall back into those family patterns again.

He'd been fooling himself. He felt now as if he'd been a leaf in a river these past weeks. Calandria's abduction, his terror of the visions, the whirlwind visit to the Boros where intrigue, murder and disguise were daily companions—these events had all given him excuses to feel helpless. He had let Calandria lead him, had accepted her stories; he had let Suneil lull him into complacency. He was a blank page on which others had signed their names, and that was just the way his father lived.

It was shameful—but if he wallowed in his misery, he would just be playing the lost boy again. When Galas' mother died, the future queen had foresworn playing roles dictated by others. There was a lesson in that.

He had been in this cell for a day now. Someone had slid some food under the door that morning; otherwise, he might have been completely alone in the building.

This Boros domicile was not so grand as the manor house the Hooks had destroyed. It stood in the Rhiene high street, squeezed between two even grander mansions. There were no grounds, only a cobbled courtyard in front with a high wall and a gate. The building was tall, he knew, but he wasn't sure how many storeys it was since his only view of it had been upsidedown as he was yanked off the horse yesterday evening. Four, five storeys? It didn't matter, there was only one cellar and he was in it.

In the stories he used to read, bad people always had dungeons in their castles. Emmy had scared him for years by spinning tales of a secret level underneath Castor's manor. There was no such thing there, of course, any more than there was here. He was in some kind of disused storage room. They'd tossed a cot, a blanket and a bucket in after him, and let him set them up himself, in his own dungeon style.

Jordan wasn't quite sure what Brendan Sheia meant to do to him. Certainly the man had power, maybe enough to make an innocent traveller disappear without investigation.

He shivered again. First on the agenda was to find a way to block that draft.

They'd left him his cloak, so he bundled that up and stepped on a jutting stone in the wall to stuff it in the window. As he did so he heard footsteps passing in the hall outside.

"Hey, let me out!" he shouted.

"Quiet in there." The footsteps receded.

"I didn't do a damn thing, you stupid bastards!" He jumped down and gave the door a sound kick.

It felt good, and the crash was satisfactorily loud, so he kicked again. Tamsin would have a suitable insult for an occasion like this, he was sure. All he could think of was the one she'd used earlier today: "Trotting swine!"

He went to kick again but the door suddenly swung wide with a shriek of rusty hinges, and in its place was a huge scowling man with a long stick in his hand.

Before Jordan could react the man butted him in the stomach. Pain exploded in his belly, and he went down.

He curled up instinctively and thus avoided the worst of the kicks that followed. Then the man spat on him and left.

"Bastards," whimpered Jordan, as he unwrapped shaking hands from his head. "Bastards bastards bastards," all of them, Calandria, Armiger and Axel, Suneil and the whole stinking Boros clan. "Bastards."

—And then he was in the flow of Vision, hearing the burr of Armiger's voice in his own chest, and an overlay of chorusing identities in the walls, in the sullenly firm door and the very earth under his shoulder. It was like he'd fallen in a snake pit, with a thousand heads rising hissing all about him. Jordan grabbed his head and doubled up again with a cry.

He concentrated. This is my hand; he brought it up to his eyes. This is my sight. I am here, not in the palace, not in the walls: here.

Jordan rolled to his knees, gasping. The powers whispered and danced around him, but he had carved out a bubble for himself in their center. He could see and hear, and act. With some difficulty, he got to his feet.

Cold air lapped at his throat. He almost laughed. "You're cruel," he said to the Winds. "Now you're going to listen to me for a change."

He sat on the cot and wrapped the cloak around his shoulders. There was no need to take deep breaths to enter the visionary trance now; he closed his eyes and summoned it.

First he had to know where he was. He could see the mansion around him in translucent outline. The basement was indeed extensive, and he was next to a place with convoluted shelves that must be a wine cellar. There were several stairs leading up, and he instinctively chose the narrow servants' way as his goal. That led from the back of the wine cellar, predictably enough.

There was a cistern down here, and a long room with a high arched ceiling. Castor's manor had an exercise room and archery range in the basement, which was probably what this was. All these rooms opened off the same corridor as Jordan's cell. In addition there were several side halls that ran to lockers of various sizes.

The problem with this way of seeing was that it didn't seem to show people. Jordan knew there was a dog on the main floor, almost exactly above his head; he could see it. The rest of the rooms on that level were visible too, though in a jumble of perspective as if he were standing at the base of a huge glass model. He had to sort out what he was seeing, and if he had not had ample experience reading architects' plans at Castor's, he might not have been able to sort out hall from room, chimney from garderobe.

It only took a few minutes to work out the shortest route from here to the tradesman's entrance. Night was falling; in a few hours the area would be quiet. Then he could make his escape—provided the next parts of his plan worked.

He needed to see more than just the outlines of the place. When the Heaven hooks descended on the Boros manor, Jordan's vision had briefly expanded to include distant places. He had been able to see what was happening inside the manor, even though he was hundred of meters away. Try as he might, however, he had ben unable to repeat that experience.

There was something else he could try. Jordan focussed his mind on one name, and hurled it into an imagined sky with all his might:

"Ka!"

He waited. There was no response, and he could see nothing as he scanned the vague landscape that opened out beyond the manor.

"Ka! Come here!"

Nothing. He waited a long while, but the little Wind must be too far away to hear him. All right; on to the next idea.

Careful not to break his concentration, he rose and moved to the door. He ran his fingertip around the keyhole on the large iron lock plate. He could actually see inside the lock if he concentrated; the mechanism was simple. All he needed was something with which to manipulate the tumblers.

There was another thing he wanted to try. He had nothing to lose now, where before he had been afraid of alerting the Winds to his presence by experimenting. Jordan returned to the cot, gathering his cloak on the way; it was getting quite chilly in here.

For some time now he had known he could communicate with the mecha. He had been reluctant, however, to ask himself the next logical question:

Could he command the mecha, as the Winds did?

As he sat by the lakeside and poured water from bucket to cup and back again, Jordan had discovered something he had at the time been afraid to test. Each and every object in the world knew its name; all, that is, save for the humans who lived here, because they had no dusting of mecha within them.

The waves on the lake had known their identity as waves, but as they lapped against the shore they disappeared as individuals. Jordan had found by experimenting that when you changed an object into something else, its mecha noticed and altered its name to suit.

That had got him wondering: could you command an object to change its name; and if you changed an object's name, would the object itself change to match it?

The cot was a plain wooden frame with thin interwoven slats to lie on. He pried one of these up and held it out in front of him. "What are you?" he asked it.

"Cedar wood. Wood splinter..."

"You are now kindling, hear?"

"Consistent," said the splinter.

"So, burn!"

He held his breath. After a moment the splinter said, "Ignition of this mass will exhaust all mechal reserves. Further transformations will not be possible without infusion of new essence."

"Just do it."

He opened his eyes to watch. Nothing happened... then the splinter began to smoke. "Ow!" He dropped it, whipping his fingers to cool them. For some reason Jordan had assumed the thing would neatly sprout a flame from one end. Instead, the entire splinter was afire.

"Splinter: douse yourself."

It didn't answer. Well... it had said something about exhausting reserves. Maybe the mecha in it had died in setting it afire. He closed his eyes and examined it with his inner vision, and indeed the small flame was a dark spot in the mechal landscape.

Jordan restrained the urge to leap to his feet and shout. He would only bring down the guard—but then, couldn't he just command the guard's clothes to burst into flame too? Was there anything he couldn't do now?

He sat there for a while, giddy with the possibilities. He picked up another splinter, and said to it, fly.

That is not possible for this object, said the splinter.

Hmm. Well, at least he knew he wouldn't freeze now. He picked up a rock and tried to convince it to become a knife, but it demurred, listing off a dozen conditions he needed to fulfill for it to transform: heat, presence of carbon and significant iron deposits, etc.

So the mecha were limited. It wasn't really a surprise—and he could hardly complain! He should be able to get out of this room, at least, if he could pick the lock. He might even be able to defeat the guard if he was clever—but it would be better to sneak past him, if possible.

He pried a good splinter off the bed, and said to it, "Can you become harder?"

"At an exhaustion rate of 50% it is possible to—"

"Just do it."

The splinter seemed to shrink a little in his hand. He bent down, closed his eyes, and applied it to the lock.

"Ka," said a voice like a chime.

Jordan turned. Hovering in the narrow window slit was the wraith-like butterfly from the market. It had heard him after all!

"Greetings, little Wind," he said respectfully. "Can you help me?"

Ka drifted from room to room, reporting what it saw. Its habit was to hover at least a meter above the heads of the empty ones, because a randomly swung arm could smash it. This had happened to more than one of its previous bodies. Ka was in its own way proud that it had survived in this one for thirty years now.

Desal 463 did not mind Ka's servitude to the magician. Neither did Ka. Its patrol was the market anyway, where it hunted for ecological deviations. The entire city hovered on the edge of abomination, but the empty ones had learned scrupulous cleanliness over the centuries. Every now and then, however, some visitor imported something outside the terraforming mandate —petroleum, crude electric devices, most recently some cheerfully glowing radioactives stolen from a fallen aerostat—and it was Ka's job to find the offending substance. Then other agents of the desal would act, recovering the deviation and generally killing any empty ones associated with it. Empty ones made good fertilizer when they died; it neatly balanced the equation.

The being who had called it forth from the market was something else entirely. Its voice had the power to compel in a way the magician's could not. As far as Ka was concerned, it was a Wind.

"Tell me what you see," it said now.

"I can relay the information directly to your sensorium, if you wish," said Ka.

"What? What do you mean? Show me."

Ka beamed an image of the corridor to the waiting Wind.

"Ah! Stop it!"

"As you wish."

"Um... can you do that with hearing? Can I hear what's going on around you?"

"Yes." Ka began to relay sound as it travelled.

It drifted from room to room, pausing to eavesdrop on conversations, then moving on.

"...Don't know why I'm forbidden to go into the cellars tonight. He's up to something bad, I just know it..."

Down the hall from that room: "...I don't think this meat is cooked through..."

Elsewhere on the same floor: "He could be useful to us, but obviously we can't trust a turncoat like that. Especially one who's spent his career with the Perverts. How do we know what he wants, in the end?"

"So he's a pawn?"

"We'll play him out a little. He could be a competent bureaucrat. When the time comes, we'll trade him for something more valuable."

"And Mason?"

"Mason is going to save us. There's grumbling that our house is cursed. Cursed! —Because of what happened at Yuri's. You and I know it wasn't our fault. We have to convince the rest of the world that we're innocent victims. If Turcaret was right, and the Heaven hooks were after Mason, then all we need to do is stake him out in a field in full view of the town, and wait for the Winds to come. The sooner the better; we can't let the courts get ahold of this, they'll tie us up in years of wrangling. No. Tomorrow, we put the word out, then the day after we put him out, and if anyone objects we put a sword to their throat. It'll be done before anyone can mount an organized resistance. And after the Winds come down, no one is going to question why we did it. We'll be seen as having done the Winds' bidding. It could end up in our favor."

Someone entered the room, and the voices turned toward a discussion of food. Ka drifted on, up the grand stairway, and towards the back of the house. There were voices coming from behind one door there, and it was made to pause and listen again.

"It's called the Great Game, niece, and you have to play it to survive."

"So it was a game you were playing when you led the soldiers to our town."

"No, you misunderstand me—"

"Ha! You could have saved them. You lied to me. And I believed you!"

"You do what you have to in order to survive, niece. And you can't get emotional about it. That's the beginning and the end of it. If it weren't for me, you'd be dead now. I saved you—"

"You killed them! You killed them!"

"Silence!"

"No! I won't be silent anymore. I won't be anything for you anymore."

"You will. Yes, you will. Listen, do you think your life has any value in this country if people find out what you really are? Where you're from? They won't look at you and see a young woman full of promise, as I do, Tamsin—they'll see a monster, born of monsters. At best a curiosity, at worst an abomination to be stoned. Now you have two choices, young lady. You can do as I tell you, learn your lines and your dance steps, and become the proper young lady in society here at Rhiene. Or, if you won't do that, I can still get something of my investment back if I turn you in to the high court as a renegade Pervert. If that's what you want, then that's the way we'll do it. Believe me, I don't care either way at this point."

There was no reply to this; only silence, drawn out until at last Ka was ordered to withdraw.

The lock made a very loud click as it turned over. Jordan held his breath past a tight grin. Had the guard heard? Apparently not. He pushed the door open slowly.

The brawny man who had hit him earlier was sitting at a table in the hall outside. He was industriously carving leaf designs into the capital of what was obviously going to be a chair leg. Three other half-completed legs lay on the table next to him.

The knife he was carving with was very large.

What would Armiger do? Jordan asked himself. The general knew when to attack, and when to be discrete. This was a time to be discrete.

It was interesting that Ka had been able to move sound from upstairs down to Jordan's waiting ear. That implied all kinds of things about sound that he hadn't thought before—that it was a substance, that it could be packaged and carried around. Maybe you could also choose not to carry it?

He focussed his attention on the hinges of the door, each in turn, and said, "make no sound," with his inner voice.

Each hinge acknowledged his command, but he had no idea if they would obey. Gingerly, he pushed the door open. He could feel a faint vibration under his fingers, as if the rusty hinges were grating—but he heard nothing.

Once outside, he slowly closed the door again. Holding a torrent of Vision at bay, Jordan stepped into the earth-floored cellar behind the guard, and backed his way slowly to the stone steps that led up. His heart was in his mouth. When he got to the steps he let out the breath he had been holding, but still went up them one at a time, pausing after each to look back at the broad back of the man with the knife. He knew he wouldn't just get a beating if he was found this time.

Upstairs, he ducked into a niche as two servants passed carrying a heap of linen. He poked his head out after they'd gone; there was the back entrance, in plain sight not five meters away. All he had to do was walk out the door, and he was free.

Except that he couldn't do it. The conversation Ka had relayed from upstairs had been chillingly familiar to Jordan, if not in its details, in its thrust. Just as Jordan's father had ordered Emmy to acquiesce to Turcaret's attentions, so Tamsin's uncle was ordering her to become his thing—bait, perhaps, to dangle in front of some high born household's son. And though Jordan didn't understand what threat Suneil was holding in reserve, it was obviously dire.

He owed Tamsin nothing, really. Jordan knew, though, that he would no more be able to live with himself if he left her in this situation than he would have if he had stayed in bed, those many nights ago, and let Emmy run.

Tamsin was drowning.

There was no water here. She could breathe, her heart still beat, she could walk and sit and even eat. Still, she was drowning.

The thing shaped like her uncle moved across the room. He was talking, but she couldn't make sense of the words anymore. They came to her like sounds underwater, distorted and harsh.

What was drowning her was the horror she felt every time she looked at him—knowing that inside that familiar body was a soul that had helped her, sheltered her and cared for her, laughed with her and murdered her parents.

"—Get ready for bed," he said now. "Tomorrow's another day, niece."

For her own survival, she needed to be silent now—but inside she was screaming at him: "You knew the soldiers were coming! You knew and you didn't tell anyone, you didn't tell dad you let them die you let them die..."

The worst thing was that she had known these things all along, somewhere deep in a part of her that she had told, every morning to sleep, look away.

Thinking that she had known and had gone along with this monster, her inner voice simply died out. She sat mutely, and nodded without heat, and rose to go to her sleeping closet.

As she walked she drowned a little more.

"Tamsin." His voice held an old note of concern that she had once (yesterday?) believed was genuine and defined family. She looked back at him, knowing her face was slack, unable to raise an expression.

"Sometimes—" He had looked her in the eye; now he kept his gaze on the floor as he said, "Sometimes, you have to block out the here and now, and not think about what you're doing. For your own future good."

She could picture herself laughing at him, or screaming, hitting... she couldn't summon the energy to do more than nod again. Then she knelt to open her night chest.

"Don't scream," said a voice from nowhere.

She froze. The voice was strange, tiny, like a whispering mouse.

"It's me, Jordan. I'm free, and I'm leaving. Tamsin, I don't know what you feel about me. I hope you won't betray me."

She looked behind the chest, up the wall, along it. There was no one here.

"Where are you?" she whispered.

"Outside the door." Yet the door was across the room, and she heard the voice here.

"Who are you talking to?" asked her uncle. He had come up behind her. She whirled, hands behind her on the chest.

"Nobody," she said. Her voice sounded strained to her own ears.

Her uncle's eyes narrowed. He eyed the door, then walked over to it.

No. It all broke in her like a dam, and before she knew what she was doing Tamsin grabbed a brass vase from the table and ran at her uncle. She swung the vase up at his head with all her strength; it made a satisfying crunch, and he fell over without a sound.

She flung the door open and practically fell through it—into Jordan's arms. "Let's get out of here," he said simply, and closed the door behind her.

There was only one lifeline for her now, and Tamsin took it. She grabbed Jordan's hand tightly, and ran with him.

23

They were ten alleys away from the Boros house before either spoke. "Wait," said Jordan, holding up his hand. "Gotta rest."

"They'll come after us."

"Not for a while." He had an odd distracted look on his face. He'd had it back in the hall, too. Bemused, almost sublime. "Everything's quiet."

She didn't ask how he knew that. "I'm cold."

"Yes, we've got to find some shelter."

Tamsin nearly said, "We just left shelter," but that would have taken too much energy. It didn't make any sense to go anywhere; there was nowhere to go now. She supposed there might be for him. But why had he come for her?

Jordan closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and smiled. "Yes," he said, "you've done well. Now please return to your master. I'm sure he'll be frantic without you."

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She knew he was anticipating a question. Tamsin just stared at him.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

The question was so ridiculous she laughed. "No, no I'm not." She opened her mouth to say more, but the words tripped over one another. And she didn't know where to start, or why telling him would do any good.

He spoke, touched her arm. But something distracted her, a nuance of emotion like a thing seen out of the corner of one's eye. Where to go. That was it.

Tamsin looked around. Nothing was familiar. She had no idea where she was. The buildings looming high around were nothing like the ones in her town. Even the air tasted different. She was lost, sliding. Drowning again. "I—" she said. Jordan had hold of both her wrists now. He was speaking to her, low and urgent, but she didn't understand him. She had no idea who he was.

"We have to go!" Finally words she understood.

"Yes, yes." She nodded, not to him but to herself.

Jordan began to lead her through the alleys. "Out of the city," she said. "Take me to the desert. I have to go home."

"Home?" He tightened his grip on her arm.

"Home, I have to go home, I have to..." She wanted to cry so badly, and she wasn't able to. It was the most awful thing she had ever felt. She gasped for breath.

"Tamsin, don't think me cruel for saying this," said the young man leading her. "But your family is dead."

"I know." But she quailed at his words; until this night, she knew, she had never really believed it. Even now... if she could get home, find out the truth. "Maybe somebody survived. They couldn't have killed everyone—"

"Yes, they could."

"But you need to get to the queen anyway. To find this Armiger person. Do you know the way? No. The way lies through the desert. I can guide you. We have to go that way anyway."

"We'll talk about it. I promise. For now we've got to find somewhere to hide."

He wasn't really listening. Tamsin felt, if possible, even more alone. That sense of drowning came back, like a roaring, unstoppable noise in her head.

Jordan stopped, and put his hands on her shoulders. She blinked, suddenly seeing the grey crescents of his eyes gazing on hers. "I am listening," he said. "And I'll do everything I can to help you. We just have to take things one step at a time."

This time she followed him attentively, and to her surprise, after she had gone ten paces in his footsteps she began, at last, to cry.

Jordan stood on the wall of an alley near the vertical uplands of the city. It was deep night now, but the moon was still up, and he could see its light glinting off the spires of the desal that waited half-submerged in the bay.

"You want to talk to a desal?" It was the first thing Tamsin had said since they had bedded down here. She stood below him on the nest of trash they had made. She still appeared stunned, distracted, her hair a bird's nest and her hands grimy. Even a little curiosity from her now was an encouraging sign.

"It sounds crazy, doesn't it?"

She didn't answer for a while, merely chewed her knuckle and looked around herself aimlessly. Jordan returned his own gaze to the desal; ghostly in Diadem's glow, its pinions rose from the middle of the lake like something discarded there, a sunken building or, he imagined, the shipwreck from Queen Galas' story. Except that the spires were perfect, undamaged by time or the elements. The waves slapped against their sides as peacefully as they did the docks; there was no sign of preternatural life to the thing. Just now an ornate barque from the temple was anchored near the giant central tower. He could see the torchlit figures of priests moving about in it, but couldn't tell what they were doing. Some kind of ceremony.

"I thought you were crazy when I saw you," said Tamsin, so long after his own rhetorical question that it took him a moment to connect the two. He glanced at her; she summoned a smile, like an unpracticed conjurer, and hid it as quickly. "With, with your gold underwear and, and talking to things and all."

As they ran he had given her a very sketchy rendition of his story: that he could talk to the mecha because of something Armiger had done, and that the Winds were after him. She would have heard some of it from through her uncle, if Suneil had bothered to explain why Brendan Sheia wanted him. Jordan didn't know if she believed any of it yet.

"I can't think of any other way to put an end to all this," he said. "I can't go home, because this curse will just follow me there. The Winds are hunting me because of the mecha in my head; the Boros want me as a scapegoat. The only one who can do anything about it is Armiger."

"What can he do?" She crossed her arms and looked away; but she was listening and talking now.

"The first time I saw Armiger—saw through his eyes, I mean—he was commanding an army. It was so strange, but part of it was that he was strange. The things he looked at, listened for, and the things he said... they weren't what I would have done. He didn't seem to care about the battle, or the people he was commanding, he just gave orders, and they were always good. When the Winds sent the animals to destroy his army, I remember he was totally calm during the retreat. He escaped because he was as confident and calm in the middle of that butchery as he had been standing on the hillside watching from a distance.

"I've been watching him for weeks now, and he's not the same man anymore. I think Calandria was right, he came here to conquer the Winds. He was the agent of some other creature even more powerful. But that one is dead, and Armiger is free."

She was eyeing him now. He shook his head. "I can't explain it. You have to be there, you see, to see the difference. But he has a woman now, and he cares about her. And he's affected by things around him now, where he wasn't before. The siege, he's really bothered by it. People are dying, you know, starving and injured, and he's realizing he can't do anything to help them. He's not thinking about conquering the world anymore."

Tamsin frowned. "So how can he help you? Can he make the Boros' go away?"

"Maybe. If I can convince him to help me."

"How are you going to do that? By letting that," she nodded to the desal, "eat you?"

Jordan took a deep breath. "Well, this is the crazy part. He went to Queen Galas to learn from her why the Winds are the way they are. Why they persecute people. She told him enough to give him an idea of where to look—but he can't talk to the Winds, and he's trapped in the palace with her now. But I can talk to the Winds. And I can search the places he needs to go."

"So you want to be his errand boy!"

He winced. There was a little of her former haughtiness in her voice, though, and the thought cheered him. "Errand boy for a god is not a bad position," he said. "I want to trade him the information in return for him getting the curse off my back."

"Why should he trade? You said yourself he no longer wants to subdue the Winds."

He hesitated. She did seem interested; he wondered if what he was going to say would make her dismiss him as crazy, and turn her back on her own misery.

"The thing is," he said at last, "I think he should."

Tamsin didn't answer. She just cocked her head, and waited.

"This is the crazy part, Tamsin, and you have to promise to think about it before you laugh at me. See, I think we all of us could originally command the Winds. Everybody was once like I am now."

Tamsin snorted. "If everybody could do anything they wanted, it would be chaos! Why pay for anything, if you can just summon the Winds to create it?"

"The world began in chaos," he said. "Calandria told me Ventus was originally made for us, not for the Winds. Nobody in all the ages has ever been able to change it back, not even people from the stars like her. But Armiger could do it, if only he knew what their secret was. Before, when he was trying to find the secret for his own master, it would have been a disaster to have him win. Now it's different."

"You think he'd set things right?"

"He might. The man he's become, would try."

She didn't answer, just made an odd noise, and thinking she was laughing at him again he turned to fire a retort back. She wasn't looking at him, just pointing at the mouth of the alley.

"There they are!" Jordan saw a confusion of torches in the street, and the dark figures of a number of men.

"Brendan Sheia!" He knelt down. "Quickly, grab hold." Tamsin boosted herself up and he pulled her onto the wall.

"That won't do you any good," said a smug, familiar voice from the ground on the other side.

Jordan looked down, into the eyes of the magician from the marketplace.

"Thief! I'll have your head for stealing my power."

For a second old habits took hold: "I didn't steal him!" yelled Jordan. "I borrowed him and I gave him back." Then he saw moonlight glint off the blade in the man's hand.

There were six men on the alley side of the wall, and four including the magician on the other, which was someone's garden. The wall itself ran between two buildings; there was no exit to be had by running along its top.

Three of the men in the alley had torches, as did the magician.

"Let us go!" said Jordan. "I don't want to hurt you."

The magician laughed. "Nice bluff."

"Get ready to jump" Jordan hissed to Tamsin. "Torch, crack!"

Sparks and burning wood flew everywhere as the torch in the magician's hand exploded. He screamed and fell, batting at the embers in his hair.

"Now!" Jordan and Tamsin landed in the dirt next to the magician, whose friends were smacking him on the head to put out his hair. There was an open gate at the far end of the garden, so Jordan made for that. Tamsin kept up easily.

They entered a moonlit street. In the distance he heard running feet; the others were coming around the end of the block. "Ka! Come to me."

"Ka." The ghost of a butterfly wafted through the open gate.

Tamsin tugged at his arm. "They're coming!"

"I know. We can't stay here. Ka, we need horses. Find me two of them, right now!"

"This way." The butterfly flitted off down the street—thankfully away from the sound of running feet.

"So now I am the thief he accused me of being," panted Jordan. "He deserves it though, the bastard."

"What's going on?" They entered another alley, this one shadowed by the high walls of buildings to either side.

"There! They went down that alley!"

It was too dark here to see anything. Jordan closed his eyes and looked with his other sight. "This way." He followed Ka to a stable door; inside he could see the outlines of two sleeping horses.

"Ka, speak to the horses. I want them awake and ready to go with us if you can do that."

"I have no power to compel. But I can present you to them as a Wind, if that is your desire."

"Yes!"

Torches appeared at the mouth of the alley. Jordan made these explode as well, and their pursuers retreated in dismay. Jordan proceeded to saddle the sleepy horses in complete darkness, relying on touch and the ghost-light of his mechal vision. The horses were pliant and appeared unsurprised at this intrusion.

Tamsin had craned her neck out the door to watch the alley mouth; as he was cinching the second horse she said, "They're waking the people in the houses. This house too. I think they know what we're doing. Smelled the horses, maybe."

"Well, we're ready. Come on." He led the horses outside.

"But where are we going? What about your plan to visit the desal in the bay?"

"You said there was another one in the middle of the desert," he shot back. "You wanted to go home, Tamsin. Well, that's where we're going to have to go."

He dug his heels into the flank of the horse and it bolted through shouting men, and when he looked back Tamsin was following, crouched low on her horse, wearing a grin that could be terror or satisfaction—and maybe was a bit of both.

General Lavin laid his quill down wearily, and peered at the manacled prisoner Hesty had led in. "Why is this of interest?" he asked.

Hesty grimaced. "I hate to bother you with trivial matters. This man is a looter, we caught him skulking in the ruins of one of the outlying villages."

"Yes? So execute him." Lavin turned his attention back to his plans.

"He claims to have valuable information to sell. About the siege."

"Torture it out of him."

"We tried."

Lavin looked up in surprise. The prisoner was a small man, wiry and grey-haired. He stood in an exhausted stoop, trembling slightly. His left arm was broken, and had not been set, and there were burn marks up and down his bare torso, and rope burns around his throat. He glared dully but defiantly at Lavin from his good eye; the other's lid was bruised and swollen, as were his lips.

Lavin stood and walked around him. A large portion of the skin was missing from his back; the flesh there wept openly.

"He completely defied the torturer," Hesty explained. "He insists on speaking only to you. And," he shook his head in disbelief, "he wants to bargain!"

Lavin half-smiled, and came around to look the prisoner in the eye. "And why not? He obviously loves his life, Hesty. But there's no reason to believe he knows anything."

"Hear me out," whispered the prisoner. He hunched, as if expecting a blow, but his gaze remained fixed on Lavin's.

Lavin threw up his hands. "All right. Your torturers are incompetent, or this man has more character than they do." He sat on a camp chair, and gestured for the prisoner to sit opposite. Awkwardly, as if his legs would not bend properly, the prisoner sat, hunching forward so as not touch the back of the chair. Hesty folded his arms and looked on in amusement.

"What is your name?"

"Enneas, lord Lavin."

"You were caught looting, Enneas. We punish that with death, but we're not cruel. Why did you choose to be tortured instead of letting us hang you quickly?"

Enneas breathed heavily, and seemed on the verge of fainting. He put his good arm on his knee to steady himself, and said, "I know something that will win you the siege without much bloodshed. But why should I tell you, if I'm going to die anyway?"

Lavin nearly laughed. The answer was self-evident: they would stop torturing him, that was why. But the torture hadn't worked, and by the look of him, the man wouldn't survive much more of it.

"I can't believe you mean to bargain with us."

Enneas tried to smile; it came across as a grotesque grimace. "What do I have to lose?"

"Your testicles," said Hesty impatiently.

Lavin waved him silent. "I'm sure all that has been explained to Mister Enneas. Some of it done, too, by the looks of things."

"I want to live!" Enneas glared fiercely at Lavin. "Free me, and I'll tell you what I know. Kill me, and things go badly for you in the siege."

"I don't bargain." Lavin stood. "Kill him."

Hesty took Enneas by his broken arm and dragged him screaming to his feet. "Sorry to have bothered you," Hesty grumbled as he pushed the prisoner through the flap of the tent.

Lavin sat brooding after they had left. He was preoccupied with plans for the siege, and it did look like it would be costly. There was an option yet to be tried but, much as he hated to admit it, that might not work. If it didn't, a frontal assault would be his only choice.

Enneas had made a pitiful figure, sitting in his clean tent. He was a ruined man, and there would be many more like him before this was all over. Lavin had no compunction about sentencing a man like him to death; he would rather the money Enneas had taken go to feed wounded veterans, widows or children.

But sometimes he lost sight of why he was here. The siege would be bloody, and dangerous, not only to his men, but to the Queen. And that did not sit well with him.

He stood and left the tent. It was late afternoon, and cool and cloudy, but dry. A pall of smoke hung over the staggered tents of the encampment. Men bustled to and fro, carrying supplies and marching for exercise. Far away, on the outskirts of the camp, a simple scaffold stood. Someone was being hung even as he watched.

Hoping it was not Hesty's prisoner, he picked up his pace, mindful to nod and acknowledge the greetings of his men as he went.

The scaffold disappeared behind some tents as he got closer. He hurried, but just as he was about to leave the edge of camp someone hailed him.

"Yes?" He waited impatiently as his chief mechanist ran over. The man was bowlegged and hirsute, and his helmet perched atop his head like some metallic bird. He bowed awkwardly, and pointed in the direction of the siege engines.

"General, sir! Someone punctured the water barrels last night! The supply's shot—I mean, it's leaked out! There isn't enough left to run the steam cannon."

Lavin hissed. "Sabotage? Is that what you're saying?"

The mechanist backed away. "Yeah. Yeah, sabotage. What are we going to do?"

"What about our own rations?"

The man's eyes widened. "The drinking water?"

Lavin nodded. "Is it safe?"

"Uh... not my department..."

"Find out. We will use it if we have to. Report back to me in an hour—and tell Hesty about this right away. Now excuse me."

He rounded the tent in time to see them lower a body from the scaffold. Two soldiers heaved it up between them and carried it to a low pile of corpses nearby.

The rope had already been put around Enneas' neck. The other end went up over the arm of the scaffold and to the halter of a bored horse. To hang Enneas, all they would have to do was walk the horse a few meters.

The thief's eyes were closed. He seemed to be praying. But he didn't beg, and he stayed on his feet, though he tottered.

Lavin was angry about the sabotage. It would cost him lives if the steam cannon were inoperable. He nearly turned and marched back his tent. Maybe though, just maybe, this man could make up for those potential casualties.

Still, he waited until the horse began to walk, just to see if the thief would break down. The rope tightened around his neck, but he didn't struggle as he was lifted skyward.

"Stop! Cut him down!" Lavin strode over to the scaffold. Surprised soldiers jumped to untie the rope from the horse's harness. Enneas fell to the ground, choking, dirt grinding into his bloody back.

They hauled him to his feet and unwound the rope. He coughed and gasped, and blinked at Lavin with his good eye.

"You have your life," Lavin told him, "if you tell me what you know, and if I judge that it will be of use to me."

Enneas' knees buckled. He managed to croak, "Done!" before he fainted.

24

Through dusty, unventful days the passenger carriage had trundled its way south. Calandria May knew the shape of the seats intimately now; she felt her body had become moulded to conform to them, it certainly wasn't the other way around. The primitive suspension of the vehicle sent every jolt and rattle of the wheels up her spine and into her throbbing head. And the thing was slow, stopping frequently at mail drops or to exchange horses.

Still, it was all they'd been able to afford with the last of their funds. This route would take them unobtrusively into Iapysia, where hopefully they could acquire some faster transportation. The country was in enough chaos that hopefully a couple of stolen horses wouldn't be missed.

"My, you've become a paragon of caution," Axel had said to her when she told him of this plan. "What happened to 'get the hell down and find Armiger at all costs?'"

She'd shrugged. "What's the point? We don't have the weapons necessary to destroy him anymore. All we can do is observe until we can contact a passing ship and call in a strike."

Their last reliable information had Armiger on his way to visit Queen Galas, who was either dead now, or still holed up in her palace, depending on who you talked to. Either way, it seemed unlikely that Armiger would still be going there, because her cause was doomed. They were rattling along in this carriage because the queen was their only lead. But there was no urgency to the journey now.

Axel was mostly recovered now, though you wouldn't know it from the way he slept most of the day away. Without action to sustain him, he folded in on himself and became a dead weight. Calandria didn't have the fight left herself to try to bring him out of his lethargy.

Consequently, when on a completely typical evening of jolting over rutted tracks, her skull computer said without warning Incoming transmission, Calandria May sat up straight and said, "Thank the gods!"

The passengers seated opposite them in the carriage didn't look up; all three of them were nodding drowsily. They would have found it hard to hear Calandria over the noise of the wheels anyway.

She turned to find Axel staring back at her. She was just opening her mouth to ask him to please tell her he'd heard it to, when a different voice spoke in her mind.

"This is Marya Mounce of the research vessel Pan-Hellenia. Can anyone hear me?"

Axel's face split in a wide grin. "A ride!" he said.

The other passenger on their side of the carriage mumbled something, and butted Axel with his shoulder.

The voice continued. "I'm on a reentry trajectory. The Winds are after me. The Diadem Swans went berserk a couple of days ago and they've either captured or driven away all ships in the system. I tried to ride it out but they're on to me now. I'm going to try to land at the coordinates of the last transmission we received from our agent on the surface."

"Agent?" whispered Calandria. "So there really are some researchers down here right now?"

Axel looked uncomfortable. "Well, yes, but maybe not like you think," he said.

It took her a minute to catch on. "You're the agent she's referring to?" Calandria said to him.

"Yeah, yeah. Look, I didn't see any reason why I couldn't make some money on the side, so when those galactic researchers asked whether I could feed them regular observations while I was here, I jumped at it. Why not? I didn't think the Winds would be jumping down our throats quite so enthusiastically."

She had to laugh. "You are full of surprises, you know that?" Usually they were unpleasant, but if this Mounce person was on her way to this part of the continent...

Calandria reached out and rapped on the top of the doorframe. "Driver. You can let us out here, please."

An hour later they paused in the center of a darkening field in the very middle of nowhere. The milky way made a broad swath of light across the sky. Diadem was setting, its light glittering darkly off a lake near the horizon. There were no houses visible anywhere; other than the road, the nearest feature to the landscape was a dark row of trees along a nearby escarpment.

"There she is." Calandria pointed to a slowly falling star at the zenith. "We're going to have to break radio silence."

Axel nodded. If Mounce's ship landed back at the Boros manor, it would take them a week to reach it, and by then she would surely have lifted off again. Particularly if the Diadem Swans came down after her.

They watched the little spark overhead grow. Chill autumn wind teased at Axel's long black hair. Neither spoke. Axel wasn't sure what Calandria was feeling, but that dot of light represented escape to him, if they could get aboard it and evade the things that were chasing it.

"We may have to act quickly," Calandria said. "Where would be a good spot?"

"Nowhere's a good spot," he said. "So we might as well flag her down right here. At least it's level and open."

"Here goes," said Calandria. Then her voice spoke in his mind. "This is Calandria May calling the Pan-Hellenia. Can you hear me?"

They waited in tense silence. The brightening star had begun to drift away over the lake, following Diadem.

"Hello! Yes, it's me, Marya. Are you with Axel chan?"

"Yes."

"They're behind me, so I'm coming down at your last location—"

"No! Can you find us from this signal? We're a couple hundred kilometers south of where he last contacted you."

"Oh. I don't know if I can... Yes, it says it can do that. Do you have shelter?"

Axel and Calandria exchanged a glance. He squatted down and began pulling stalks of grass out of the ground. "Shit. Shit, shit shit."

"Why do you need shelter?" asked Calandria. "Are you trying to pick us up, or—"

"Pick you up? I'm trying to stay alive! The Swans are behind me, they're closing in. They've picked off every ship that's tried to get past Diadem. I've stayed ahead of them this far by skimming the top of the atmosphere, but they're all over. Everywhere! I— hang on—"

Axel could see his shadow on the grass. He glanced up, in time to see the star brighten again to brilliant whiteness, and swerve quickly in their direction. Around and above it, a coruscating glow had sprung up, like an aurora.

All over, thought Axel. Great.

"The forest," said Calandria. "Come on!" She began sprinting. He looked up again, then followed.

Low rumbles like thunder began. Instead of fading, they grew. The sound was familiar to Axel, and unmistakable: something was coming in to land. The sound had a ragged edge to it. Years of exposure to spacecraft told him it was a small ship. The big ones sang basso profundo all the way down.

Their shadows sharpened as they ran. Axel began to feel heat on his face. The roar became a steady, deafening thunder. On the shoreline below, the crescent of sand lit amber under a midnight dawn. Axel knew better than to look directly at the spear of light settling towards them, though it seemed as though Mounce was going to bring her ship down right on top of them.

The sky was starting to glow from horizon to horizon. He'd never seen that effect accompany the arrival of a starship.

Axel redoubled his effort, though he had twisted his ankle and it spiked pain up his leg with every step. Calandria was pulling ahead, but he didn't have the breath to spare to tell her to slow down.

Suddenly spokes of light like heat lightning washed across the sky. Their center was the approaching ship.

A blinding flash staggered Axel. Childhood memory took hold: he counted. One, two, three, four— Ca-rack! The concussion knocked him off his feet. He came up tasting grass and dirt.

Whatever that flash had been, it had happened less than a kilometer away. He blinked away lozenges of afterglow in time to see the brilliant tongue of fire overhead waver, and cut out.

A dark form fell with majestic slowness into the forest. As it disappeared a white dome of light silhouetted the treetops, and Axel felt the deep crump of impact through his feet.

Calandria was waiting at the edge of the forest. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," he said through gritted teeth. "Let's go." They waded into the underbrush. The darkness would have been total under the trees, except that a fire had started somewhere ahead, and the sky was alive with rainbow swirls. Axel would have found them beautiful if he hadn't been so frightened.

Of course, if there were any witnesses to this within fifty kilometers, they'd all be cowering under their beds by now. No sane person would want to be caught in the open when the swans touched ground.

It was dark enough that Axel couldn't spot branches and twigs fast enough to prevent himself getting thoroughly whipped as they went. Stinging, his feet somehow finding every hidden root and rock, he soon lost sight of Calandria, who as usual moved through the underbrush like a ghost. He could hear his breath rattling in his lungs, and somewhere nearby the crackling of the fire. Above that, though, a kind of trilling hiss was building up. It seemed sourceless, but he knew it must be coming from the sky. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end; so did those on his arms. He might have preferred it if they were doing that from fright, but he knew it must be the effect of a million-volt charge accumulating in the forest.

"Axel!" He hurried in the direction of the voice. Past a wall of snapped tree trunks and smouldering loam, Calandria stood on the lip of the crater Marya Mounce's ship had dug.

The ship was egg-shaped, maybe fifteen meters across. It was half-buried in the earth. Smoke rolled up from its skin, which was blackened and charred. Neither the heat of reentry nor the crash could have cindered the fullerene skin to that degree. "She can't have survived that," Axel said as he staggered to a halt next to Calandria. "What did they do?"

"Can't you feel it?" she asked. Stray wisps of her hair were standing up. Little sparks danced around Axel's fingers when he wiped them on his trousers. "They hit her with a lightning bolt."

"Well they're about to fire another one," he said. "We'd better get out of here—" He was interrupted by a flash and bang! of thunder. He ducked instinctively, though it had come down at least a few hundred meters away.

"There!" Calandria pointed. Warm orange light was breaking from somewhere around the curve of the egg. A hatch had opened.

They clambered over the smoking debris, and rounded the ship in time to see a small figure step daintily out of the hatch, arms out for balance.

"Hello!" shouted Marya Mounce. "Is anybody there?"

The woman revealed by the glow of the ship's lights was not the brave rescuer Axel had hoped for. Marya Mounce was tiny, with pale skin and broad hips. Before seeing her face he noticed the frizz of her dun-coloured hair, which was held back by an iridescent clip. She was dressed in a blouse that swirled like oil, and a black skirt. It was evidently some inner system fashion, spoiled by the kakhi bandoliers slung over her shoulders.

What made his heart sink, though, was the sight of her feet.

Mounce had succumbed to a fashion sweeping the inner worlds, and had her Achilles tendons shortened. Her toes, the balls of her feet and calf muscles were augmented, so she stood en pointe at all times. All she wore on her feet were metallic toe-slips. He doubted she could run, much less climb over the broken trees strewn about this new clearing.

"There you are!" she shouted as Axel and Calandria fell over one last log. "See, we survived! You—you are May and Chan, aren't you?"

"Who else would be crazy enough to be here?" he said. "Are you alone?"

"Yes, it's just me." Mounce turned and waved vaguely at the ship. "I was doing a demographic survey, it involved some close orbits, so that's why I got caught in the—"

"You can tell us later," said Calandria in her most diplomatic voice. "The swans are coming." She pointed.

"Ah. Yes." Mounce's looked disappointed, but not frightened.

The sky was full of arcing incandescent lines. They stretched in a spiral all the way to the zenith, like ladders to heaven. Axel had seen the Heaven hooks when they came to destroy the Boros estate, and those too had been skyhooks of a sort, but nothing like this. Where the Heaven hooks had been cold metal and carbon-fibre, the swans seemed bodiless, creatures made of light alone.

From his scant reading on the subject, Axel knew the swans were nanotech, like most of the Winds. They were constituted from long microscopic whisker-like fibres. These could manipulate magnetic fields, and in their natural environment in orbit they meshed together in their trillions to form tethers hundreds of kilometers long. They drew power from the planetary magnetic field, and projected it by the gigawatt to where ever it was needed.

They could fly apart in an instant and recombine in new forms, he knew. Some of these forms could apparently reach down through the atmosphere itself, maybe even touch down on the surface of Ventus.

Calandria took Mounce by the shoulders. "Do you have any survival supplies?"

"Y-yes, it's a institute policy to carry some."

"Where are they?" Calandria vaulted into the ship. "We need stealth gauze. Have you got any?"

"I don't—" began Mounce. The voice of the ship interrupted her. Axel couldn't hear what it said over the roar of a nearby fire.

With a curse he hauled himself in the hatch after Calandria. She was rooting in a suit locker near the lock.

For a second Axel just let himself drink in the sight of the clean white floors, padded couches and trailing wall ivy decorating the ship. The Pan Hellenia represented civilization, with all the amenities—flush toilets, air beds, hot showers and sonic cleansers, VR, fine cuisine...

"Axel, help me!" He sighed, and turned away from it all.

Calandria was throwing things indiscriminately into a survival bag. Axel spotted a first-aid kit, diagnostic equipment, some emergency rations, a flashlight—

"Aha!" He pounced on the laser pistol. "Now I feel whole again."

"Forget that—help me with this." She was struggling to unclip a heavy box from the wall.

"What's that? Cal, it's way too heavy—"

"Nanotech customization kit. It'll save our lives, believe me."

"Okay." He helped her wrestle it down and into the bag.

"Uh, guys?" Mounce stood in the entrance, framed nicely by a vision of burning forest. "We'd better get going. The swans are here."

Calandria leapt past her, carrying two metal cases. Axel had never seen Calandria like this. It made him more than a little uneasy—as if his own vivid imagination was underselling the danger they were in.

"Hell!" Caught in her urgency, Axel swung the survival bag onto his shoulder and, staggering under the load, followed. Mounce accompanied him, her hands fluttering as she visibly tried to find a way to help.

A strange twilight glow pervaded the shattered clearing. Calandria had dumped both cases on the ground and was frantically rooting through one of them when Axel and Mounce caught up to her. Drifts of wood smoke stung Axel's eyes and the roar and heat of nearby flames made his head spin. Sparks of static electricity were flying everywhere, and Mounce's clean hair puffed out around her head like a dandelion.

Suddenly Calandria cried out, and collapsed. She curled into a ball on the smoking ground, hands clutching her head.

Axel felt it too—a ringing pain his head. It was centered on the left side, just above his ear. Mounce cursed in some foreign language and pulled off her crescent-shaped hair clip.

"What's happening?" she shouted over an impossible roar of sound. The sound of the fire was drowned out by the approach of the swans. It wasn't a single sound, but many, like a thousand strings. The swans sang a single unison chord as they reached to touch ground.

Lightning arced from the top of the starship. "Our implants!" shouted Axel. "We've all got hardware in our skulls. It's shorting out from all this power! Calandria's got more than either of us—she's augmented in a dozen ways." She lay insensible now, twitching next to the golden gauze she had half-pulled from the case.

"We've got to get her out of here!" He grabbed Calandria's arm, hoisting her into a fireman's carry. "Bring the stuff!"

Marya threw the cases into the survival bag and bent to haul it after her. Axel didn't look back to see how she was doing; it took all his concentration just to navigate the splintered branches and gouged earth around the ship. Finally he reached untouched forest and toppled into a thorn bush with Calandria on top of him. The singing pain in his head continued, but not as strongly as it had right next to the ship.

Marya Mounce struggled her way across the obstacles, the huge bulging sack getting caught on every jutting spar. She seemed determined, her mouth set in a grim line.

She had nearly made it to the trees when a rain of white light pattered into the loam right behind her. The ground sizzled and smoked under it.

"Run!" Axel waved frantically at her. "Forget the sack! Just run!" He knew she couldn't hear him over the chorus of the swans.

The rain intensified. It was like a funnel somewhere overhead was pouring down liquid light. Where it landed, the light coalesced, pulsing. The rain stopped abruptly, and started up again farther around the clearing.

The glow it had left behind flashed brightly once, and stood up.

Axel's voice died. He was glad Marya seemed oblivious to the thing behind her, because it would have paralyzed him were he in her place. It looked like a man, but was entirely made of liquid light. Long electric streamers flew from its fingertips and head. As another such being grew behind it, the first began to pirouette this way and that, like a dancer, obviously looking for something.

Marya landed heavily next to Axel. The survival bag spilled open. "Damn," she said meekly. Then she grinned crookedly at him. "Made it!"

Calandria pushed herself onto her elbows. "Steath gauze," she croaked. "Where'zit?"

Axel grabbed the golden filigree she had been trying to unwind earlier. He pushed himself to his knees and flipped it open, letting it drape over all three of them, as Marya hauled the survival bag in under it.

The creature that had built itself behind Marya turned and looked in their direction. Axel forgot to breathe. He felt the other two freeze too, ancient instinct kicking in to save them from a superior predator. Slowly, deliberately, the thing stalked toward them.

"Oh, shit." Axel fingered the laser pistol. It felt hot under his hand; he wondered if it was shorting out too. It looked like he would find out in a second, when he had to use it.

The thing's head snapped to the left. It paused, chin up as though sniffing the air. Then it stepped over a log and headed away. The gauze had worked.

Axel blew out his held breath. Of course the stealth gauze worked—it was designed to fool the senses of the Winds. At times like this, though, he found it hard to remember that the technology of the Winds, including the swans, was a thousand years older than his own.

Old, maybe. But not primitive. He sucked in a new breath, and tried to will his racing heart to slow.

Soon six humanoid forms walked the clearing. Everything they touched caught fire. They tossed downed trees aside, and sent beams of coherent light into the treetops, hunting high and low, but never noticing the three small forms huddled right on the edge of the clearing.

One entered the ship. Loud concussions sounded inside, and the lights went out. Then spiral tendrils of light drifted down from above, and gently but firmly gripped the sides of the ship. The five remaining humanoid forms reached out, and dissolved into the ropes of light. Then, with hardly a tremor, the swans pulled the Pan Hellenia out of the ground, and retreated into the sky with it in tow.

The stellar glow faded; the full-throated cry of the swans diminished; soon the clearing was lit only by ordinary fire. But over the smell of burning autumn leaves lay the sharp reek of ozone.

For a time the three lay where they had fallen, head to head, watching the spiral aurora recede into the zenith, until finally the stars came out one by one, like the timid crickets.

Marya Mounce sat up and brushed dirt off her sleeves. "Well," she said briskly. "Thank you both, very much, for rescuing me."

Hours later they paused, halfway around the lake under the eaves of an abandoned barn. Axel was unused to this level of activity, and he had begun to stagger badly. Calandria favoured her wounded arm, so she could only carry so much. Marya had managed to keep up amazingly well, considering her feet. Whatever augmentation had been done to support her shortened tendons had toughened the balls of her feet immensely, and she could indeed run if she needed to.

As Axel slumped down wearily, and Calandria moved slowly to gather old planks for a fire, he noticed that Marya was shivering violently—whole body shivers accompanied by wildly chattering teeth.

"Thermal wear," she muttered. "There must be some thermal wear here." She knelt down and began rummaging through the bag.

"Ah. Here we are." She pulled out a pair of silvery overalls and stood up. Axel expected her to walk away or at least turn around to remove her skirt, but she just pulled the overalls on—and the skirt vanished as she did, leaving nothing but a cloudy blackness that disappeared as she zipped up the overalls.

"What was that?" he said.

"What? What's what?" Marya peevishly squatted down, hugging herself.

"Your dress—it was holographic." He heard Calandria pause in the midst of prying a board off the old barn's door.

"Of-f c-course it-it is," Marya chattered. "It's a-a holo unitard. W-what do y-you expect me to w-wear? Cloth?"

Calandria sent Axel an eloquent look that said, you deal with this. She went back to prying at the door.

Axel wasn't actually that surprised. Holo unitards were increasingly common in the inner systems. They allowed unrestricted and unlimited costume changes for the wearer—but were only practical in climate-controlled environments.

"Well," he said, "you're on Ventus now."

"I know. Anyway, the holo's not supposed to be visible to the W-Winds."

"That's not the point," said Axel. "You'll freeze to death in that thing."

"Anyway, you'll have to get rid of it," said Calandria. "We can't take the chance that the Winds might see it."

"The ship had no cloth apparel in it. And I didn't get a chance to put the thermals on before we landed," muttered Marya. "Too busy falling out of the sky." She shuddered violently again.

She had a point there. "We'd better get this fire going," he said. Calandria dropped another load of scraps at his feet and he bent to whittle some kindling. Marya watched him avidly.

"Pretty ironic," said Calandria as she came to sit on the other side of Marya. She and Axel framed her; he could feel her shudders as he whittled. "A couple of hours ago we were nearly burned to death. Now we're freezing. Typical."

"There." Axel had his kindling. He built a little pyramid of small scraps over, leaving an opening, and began laying larger blocks above and around that. Satisfied, he brought out the lighter from the survival kit.

"I can earn my keep," said Marya. "Here, let me prove it." She reached for the lighter.

"Anybody can use a lighter, Marya."

"I want to do it the old-fashioned way. Do you have a flint and iron?"

"Yes… Have you spent time on Ventus, then?" asked Axel.

"I'm not ground survey staff." Marya stood over them both, still shaking but looking strangely determined. "But I am a cultural anthropologist. I've studied more societies than you've heard about. I know sixteen ways to start a fire. We should save your lighter for a real emergency."

Calandria exchanged another glance with Axel. Then she said, "Let her try."

"I don't want to be useless," said Marya as she took the flints from Axel. She began frantically whacking the flintstone with her iron. She hit her own fingers and dropped it. "Ow!" Before Axel could move she had snatched it up again and resumed, more carefully and also more accurately. A small spray of sparks flew into the shavings.

She bent forward to blow gently on the embers. To Axel's surprise, the tinder caught. She nursed it for a few minutes like a doting parent, while Calandria and Axel watched with bated breath.

Finally Marya sat back, triumphant, as the little fire began to burn on its own. "See! I did it!"

Both Axel and Calandria made approving noises. Maybe Marya wouldn't be as useless as her gaudy exterior threatened.

The anthropologist sat down cross-legged, and beamed at her accomplishment. Axel sighed. "Okay, Cal, let's look at your arm."

"Well," said Calandria as Axel poked and prodded, "What do we do next?"

Marya was beginning to warm up, and seemed to be regaining her poise as well. She said, "Obviously we need to get offworld as soon as possible. Something's happening—I've never seen the swans like this!"

Axel and Calandria exchanged a glance. Armiger. It could only be him.

"Listen," continued Marya. "I know Ventus like the back of my hand, even if I've never been here. We've had agents down here on and off for decades—people like Axel who've sent back reports, brought back books. I know the history. I know the geography, every city and hamlet on this continent. I speak six local languages, without the need for implant dictionaries. I've studied the religions twelve different ways." She leaned forward to warm her hands on the new fire. "I know I'm not the outdoorsy type, I think I can help you."

Calandria nodded. "Thank you. We need the help, right about now. One thing, though—you should get rid of that unitard. I know you say it's supposed to be invisible to the Winds, but do we know that for sure? I don't think we should take the chance."

"Yes, I agree," said Marya. She jerked a thumb at the sky. "Especially after seeing the swans close up—not something I want to do again, let me tell you!" She stood up and unself-consciously unzipped her coveralls.

"Hang on," said Axel. "I disagree. Marya, I think you should keep your unitard."

"Why?" asked Calandria.

Axel grinned. "I've got an idea."

25

"Where is she?" Marya strained to see through the darkness. She and Axel were crouching in damp weeds, while Calandria snuck up on some horses in a nearby paddock.

"She's nearly there," whispered Axel. "Pipe down, or the dogs will hear you."

Marya started to sit back, remembered they were on a planet covered with foul dirt, and recovered her crouching position. She shook her head. Calandria May seemed to take it for granted that her ways were the best. She had insisted on being the one to steal these horses.

"As soon as they discover they're gone, there'll be a posse out after us," she said, for what felt like the tenth time.

"We'll be long gone by the time that happens," he repeated back. "Trust us."

"My plan was better."

"We've been over this. Your unitard wouldn't fit Calandria."

"So what? I-"

The dogs started barking. Marya Mounce cursed under her breath. Calandria had been approaching downwind and with almost supernatural quiet, but the damn animals had sensed her anyway. She wasn't even to the paddock gate yet.

Calandria raced up to the paddock gate and began unhooked the loop of rope that kept it shut. Horses nickered nervously in the darkness beyond.

Marya shook her head, scowling. She had come up with a plan that, ethnologically, should guarantee that they were not pursued when they took the horses. Calandria had rejected it. The woman seemed to think only in terms of skulduggery—or maybe she didn't want to admit that Marya's plan was better than hers.

Here came the dogs, three of them snarling through the grass straight at Calandria. Marya's breath caught in her throat as Calandria froze—but then there came a brilliant flash of light that dazzled Marya's eyes for a moment.

The laser pistol was set on flash mode. Marya heard yelping, and opened her eyes to see the dogs stopped, pawing at their snouts. Poor things. A moment earlier they had been all teeth and claws, but already Marya felt like stroking them.

Calandria threw open the paddock gate. The horses were a bit dazzled too, and skittish.

The cottage door opened, throwing new light across the clearing. Two men stepped out. One shouted at the dogs.

"Trust?" said Marya. "Yeah, I trusted this was going to happen."

"Calandria will handle it, you'll see."

Indeed, May was walking confidently across the paddock towards the men. One pointed at her and swore. Marya did a mental tally of the Ventus oaths she knew, trying to identify the language. Memnonian, of course...

Marya never found out what Calandria was planning to do next, because her own impatience and annoyance got the better of her. Marya stood up, unzipping her thermal overalls. "Hey, what are you-" began Axel, stopping as Marya disappeared from sight. She had tuned her holographic unitard to black, and before he had time to figure out what she was doing, she ran into the clearing.

The men were both burly, but short. They looked rough. Behind them another figure had appeared in the cottage doorway, hands bundled in its skirts.

"What you doin?" the first barked at Calandria. Pure Memnonian, she marveled. A rich strain of it, from the accent. She could almost trace this man's ancestry by the way he sounded his vowels.

Marya stepped between the men and Calandria, and said "Morph," in a loud and clear voice. As she did, she tuned her holographic clothing to another suit.

The men's eyes widened and they fell several steps back. Marya had gone from peasant clothing to a festival costume that was all feathers and rainbows. Marya knew her face glowed out of it like an angel's. That was the design.

"Uh, hello," she said carefully. The words sounded clumsy in her own ears. "I mean you harm—no, no harm, I mean you."

They both stopped short, a couple of meters away, and looked her up and down. Behind her, Marya heard Calandria muttering something. She chose not to listen.

The men were intimidated, but stood their ground. "W-what do you want?" asked the first, who looked older. "We have nothing. We've not harmed a single creature in this wood. Look, all we've got is horses—"

"Horses," she said, nodding. "We need three. One for me, and two for my human servants."

They looked so tragic that Marya wanted to turn and just walk away. The horses were all they had, after all. They were abjectly poor, and she was robbing them. Maybe there was something she could give them... but all the off-world paraphernalia she had would endanger them if they kept it. "I'm sorry," she said.

They glanced at one another. "Do you need saddles?" said the younger man. The older one shot him a dirty look.

They really did need saddles, but Marya couldn't bring herself to go that far. "No," she said.

"Marya," hissed Calandria.

"No saddles. Just horses. Thank you."

The dogs were recovering their sight, and whined and snuffled around the feet of the men. Reluctantly, they turned to walk three palfreys over to her. She had no way of judging the quality of the mounts, and would probably have turned down the best if she knew they were offering them to her. Silently, the men bridled the horses and handed her the reins. "Spare us," was all that the older one said as she led the horses out the paddock gate.

She could smell the animals—a spicy and enticing odor, but somehow... unsanitary. Her nose wrinkled. She made hushing motions as she approached them.

The walk to the woods seemed to take forever, and Marya looked back several times. The woman had joined them, and the three stood there with slumped shoulders watching part of their livelihood go. Marya felt so bad she nearly cried.

"That was a damnfool thing to do," accused Calandria. "You could have got hurt if they'd attacked us."

"I told you my plan would work better," Marya shot back. "And I told you yours wouldn't work at all, remember?"

For once, Calandria had no answer.

"You're crazy," said Axel Chan later that night. "He'll kill us."

"We have to try." Calandria stamped the dirt near the fire in an attempt to warm her feet. "Every day we wait he'll get stronger, and nearer his goal."

"But without the Desert Voice..."

"He's not invincible, Axel. None of them are."

"But we can't guarantee his destruction. You've said yourself every molecule of that body has to be vaporized."

Calandria patted the large case they'd taken from the Pan Hellenia. "This should be enough to incapacitate him. Then we get him offworld, and take care of him once and for all there."

Marya watched them bicker wearily. This had been going on for hours now. She was beginning to wonder whether it wouldn't have been better to throw herself on the mercy of the farmers. At least she had studied them. These two were galactic citizens, like her, but they were also foreign mercenaries with completely alien priorities.

They had made camp in a hollow beneath a windswept hill. It was very cold again tonight; Marya could see her breath. She had never been so cold, for so long, in her life. Privately she was amazed and proud that she was still alive, much less mobile. Every day she battled bone-numbing cold, agoraphobia from being on the unprotected surface of a planet, and the onslaught of so many minor physical inconveniences that she was sure they were going to drive her insane.

To make matters worse, Axel had told her he thought it would rain tonight. Would it hurt? she wondered. The very thought of countless tiny water-missiles plummeting down at her from ten thousand meters made her shudder. But he seemed quite unconcerned. Show-off.

She scratched at the heavy, binding cloth garments Calandria had stolen for her the day before. She had been taught that clothing was primarily an invention for sexual display, but the people who told her that had like herself been raised in an environment of perfect climate and hygiene control. She wouldn't abandon the cloth now, uncomfortable as it was, because she needed it to keep her warm.

The argument across the fire had shifted back to whether they should continue with their mission, and attempt to stop Armiger, or whether they should try to escape the planet. Axel wanted to use their implanted radio to signal other ships that might be in the system; Calandria was adamant about retaining radio silence. She seemed frightened of attracting the attention of the Winds. And yet it was she who proposed that they confront this Armiger, whom Axel said might be hiding in the depths of a besieged fortress. The argument went back and forth, back and forth, and nothing was resolved.

Axel had told Marya the story as they walked, though he glossed over the extent of his and Calandria's interference with local affairs. Covering his ass, apparently. But this General Armiger was an off-world demigod, and somehow a young man named Jordan Mason had gained the ability to see through his eyes.

"I heard about the war with 3340," said Marya. "So Armiger is really one of that monster's servants?"

Axel nodded. "And devilishly dangerous, for that. 3340 corrupted entire planetary systems. He seduced people by offering them immortality and almost infinite power," he added with a glance at Calandria May. "Then he absorbed the resulting entities into himself. Armiger may have been an early victim."

"He was human, once?" She was surprised and disturbed at the thought.

"If he was, there's nothing left of that personality," said Calandria. She hugged herself as her gaze dropped back to the fire. "3340 absorbed millions of individuals, and then mixed and matched their consciousness as he saw fit. Anything he absorbed became part of the single entity that was him. He was ancient when the Winds were just being designed. Maybe aliens designed him—but he claimed to have made himself."

Axel harumphed skeptically. "So did Choronzon—our employer," he added in an aside to Marya. "An ex-human who had himself genetically rebuilt and made himself into a god. He's a few centuries old. It was his war with 3340 that got us involved in all of this."

Marya shook her head in wonder. "I've never met a god, unless you count the swans." She kicked at the wilting grass near the fire for a second, then added, "The Winds are gods of a sort. But damaged. They're fully aware, even if they're not completely awake. That's the tragedy of it."

"They're not gods," said Calandria with odd vehemence. "They're just machines. Idiotic. Mechanical. You can see it in everything they do."

"What do you think they do?" asked Marya.

"She's thinking of the Heaven hooks," said Axel. "They acted like a horde of dock robots gone amok. As far as we could tell, that's what they were too—the aerostats are just big cargo carriers for the terraforming operation."

Marya nodded. They'd seen one that afternoon, a vagabond moon as the locals called it, moving as slowly as a real moon through the sky, but from north to south. It had glowed gorgeous red in the sunset, and Marya had almost cried to think she might never have seen that, had she'd stayed out her term here in orbit. Being on Ventus was affecting her profoundly, in ways she hadn't begun to figure out. All she knew was she was an emotional wreck.

She looked across at Calandria May. The mercenary woman looked back levelly, but it was the steady gaze Marya had seen from prostitutes and beggars—the challenging gaze of the emotionally damaged. Marya couldn't figure her out. She was so formidable in her talents, but incredibly brittle somehow in her fundamental character. Why did she care to argue, tonight, about whether the Winds were gods?

"The Winds are in everything," said Marya, watching Calandria carefully. "The air, the rocks, the soil, the water. But they're not just sitting there, they're working, all the time. Ventus is a terraformed world—a thousand years ago there was no life here. Our ancestors sent the seed of the Winds here by slow sub-light ship, and it bloomed here and turned a dead world into a living one. The Winds couldn't do that if they were just instinctive creatures."

"But they didn't recognize humans when we came to colonize," Calandria pointed out. "When the colonists landed, the Winds couldn't tell what they were. They couldn't speak, or interact with the colonists. They left them alone because as organisms they fit into the artificial ecology—they filled a niche, like they were designed to. But their machines looked like some kind of infection to the Winds, so they destroyed them, all the computers, radios, heaters, building machines. They pounded the people back into the stone age. A thousand years later, this is as far as they've gotten, and it's as far as the Winds are ever going to let them get." She shook her head sadly. "The Winds can't be conscious. They act like some sort of global immune system, cleaning out potential infections, like us or Armiger.

"Because of that," she said quickly just as Marya opened her mouth to speak, "Armiger could take them over. They were decapitated, or born without a brain. There was a flaw in the design of Ventus. Armiger is here to exploit that."

Marya shook her head. "Can't be done," she said. "He would have to reprogram every single particle of dust on the planet. And even if he could, the Winds are conscious. They'd see through it before he could get too far."

"You think he's harmless?" snapped Calandria. She stood up. "You're so enraptured by your beautiful nanotech terraformers you don't think there's subtler things out there?"

"I didn't say that, I—"

"This system is nothing like a real god," said Calandria. "3340 told me that even its thoughts were conscious entities. Conscious thoughts!" She laughed harshly. "3340 was like an entire civilization—an entire species!—in one body. With a history, not just memories. He could make a world like Ventus in a day! How do you know he's not the one who put the flaw in the Winds in the first place? He might have done that a millenium ago, intending to let the place ripen then return to harvest it. But he got distracted by another planet before he could do that. Hsing was a much better toy, he could forge it into his own private hell much more easily. Still, he sent Armiger here. How do you know Armiger isn't a resurrection seed? He may be planning to turn the entire planet into a single giant machine to recreate 3340. It's within his capabilities. Your precious Winds are no match for Armiger."

She turned and stalked off into the grass.

Marya turned to Axel. "Well!" she said.

Axel watched Calandria's silhouette recede for a few moments. Then he grimaced and turned to Marya. "You touched a nerve," he said.

"Obviously."

"We went to Hsing to destroy 3340," he said. "With Choronzon's help, and the backing of the Archipelago." Axel told Marya the story of how Calandria had beaten 3340 by becoming its willing slave. She shook her head sadly when he was done.

Marya shifted, finding that her rear had gone to sleep on the hard log on which she was sitting. She couldn't get used to such physical annoyances. "She's wrong about the Winds though," she said.

"Don't pursue it," he advised. "Anyway, nothing we've seen since we arrived here suggests the Winds are conscious. Little bits of them here and there, like the morphs, might be. I don't know about the Diadem swans." He glanced up uneasily. "But the system as a whole? No, it's just a planetary immune system, like she says."

Marya shook her head. "If Ventus hasn't spoken to you, it's because you're beneath its notice. You forget, this world is my subject. I know more about it than you do."

"But you haven't been here," he said quietly. "You've never seen it up close. You're here now—does it seem like there's intelligence to this?" He waved his hand at the ragged grass.

"I don't know what you see when you look at it," Marya said. "Maybe it's because you've been on worlds where life just is, like Earth. Where nothing maintains it. But everything around us is artificial, Axel. The soil: there may be a thousand years of mulch here," she kicked at it, "but there's meters of soil beneath that, layer upon layer of fertile ground underneath what's been laid down since Ventus came to life. Every single grain of that was manufactured, by the Winds.

"Look at the grass! I know it looks like Earth grass, it's uneven in height, looks randomly patched over the hillside. Maybe in the past few centuries things have settled down to the point where it can be allowed to spread on its own. But I doubt it. The grass has been painted on, by the nano. Look at the clouds. They look like the clouds I see in videos of Earth. But if the Winds weren't busy sculpting them right now, do you think they would look like that? Axel, Ventus is not like Earth. Its sun has a different temperature, it's a different size, the composition of the crust is different, so the mineral balance in the oceans is—was—totally different. As a result the composition of the atmosphere, and its density, are naturally very different. This weather is not natural." She held her hand up to the breeze. "The air's been made by the Winds, and Axel, they have to keep making it. The instant they stop working, the planet will revert, because it's not in equilibrium. It's in a purely synthetic state.

"You don't honestly think the distribution of bugs, mice, and birds around here is natural, do you? It's planned and monitored by the Winds, on every square meter of the planet. Bits of it are constantly going out of wack, threatening the local and global equilibrium. The Winds are constantly adjusting, thinking hard about how to keep the place as Earth-like as possible. It's what we made them to do."

He shook his head. "Well, exactly. It's a complex system, but it's still just a big machine."

"Surely you've wondered why the Winds don't acknowledge the presence of humans?"

"The Flaw? Sure, whole religions exist here to try to answer that," he laughed. "You think you know?"

"I think I know how to find out. Listen, in your last report to us before the Heaven hooks incident, you said that Controller Turcaret claimed to be able to hear the Winds."

He glared at her. "Not claimed. He did hear them." Calandria still didn't believe that part of the story, and it obviously annoyed Axel.

"We've heard of people like that," said Marya. "But we've never been able to verify a case. If we had one to study, I'm sure we could crack the problem."

He laughed shortly. "Too bad Turcaret's dead."

"I'm not sure that's a problem," she mused. "As long as there's bits of him left..."

She heard the grass rustle; Calandria was returning. Marya saw the woman's eyes glinting like two coals in the darkness, and shivered. "We go after Armiger," said Calandria. "You know we must."

"No," said Axel. "We can return with reinforcements. I'm going to keep signalling for a ship, Cal. You can't stop me."

There was silence for a while. Then Calandria shrugged. "You're right, I can't stop you."

The atmosphere around the fire suddenly seemed poisonous. Marya stood up quickly.

"Think I'll turn in," she said, smiling at them both.

Across the fire, Calandria nodded, her perfect face still as carven stone in the firelight. Her eyes betrayed nothing, but Marya thought she could feel the woman's gaze on her back as she knelt and made her bed.

Marya dreamed about home. Outside her window she could see the gently upcurving landscape of Covenant, her colony cylinder. Sunlight streamed through a thousand lakes and pools, turning the hills and cities into translucent lace and backlighting the spiral of clouds in the center of the cylinder. As always, thousands of winged human figures drifted in the air between her and those clouds.

She walked the deep moss carpets of home. She breathed the warm honeyed air, felt it drift over her limbs finer than any cloth as she passed through room after room of her parents' apartment. Her family were here, she knew, in other rooms she had yet to reach. Then, in the back of her own bedroom, she found a door she had never seen before.

She waved the door open, and gasped to find herself in a giant library. She recognized paper books, had held a few in her hand as a student, feeling then the tremendous age and dignity of pre-space knowledge. It was this sense of ancient dignity that had driven her to anthropology.

Here were thousand upon thousand of bound books, arrayed in shelves that towered to an invisibly distant ceiling. Marya walked reverently among them.

She stumbled, knocking over a side-table. The echoes of its fall went on and on, almost visibly reaching into every distant crevice between the volumes. When it finally died, she heard a growing rustle, as if the books were rousing from slumber.

A voice spoke. "You've done it now."

"What have I done?" she asked, tremulously.

"You've got to make a choice," said the voice. "You woke us. Now you have to choose whether you want us to become a part of you, as memory; or whether you want us to become people, with whom you can speak."

She looked up at the towering wisdom, and felt a sudden love for it—as if these books were family. "Oh, please become people," she said.

But even as Marya spoke she remembered she wasn't on Covenant any more. She was on Ventus. As grim men with swords stepped out of the walls, she screamed, for she had chosen wrongly.

The sound of Axel cursing woke Marya. She groaned and tried to roll over. Her eyes felt pasted shut, for all that she had slept badly. Her back seemed to have been remade in the shape of the stones she had lain on, and the cold had entered through every chink in the blanket.

Axel was using some language Marya didn't know, but it was plain he was upset. Too bad; but couldn't he be quieter about it?

"Damn it, get up, Mounce! She's gone!"

Marya opened her eyes. Grey clouds had taken over the sky while she slept. The fire was out. She levered himself up on one elbow, fought a wave of dizziness, and blinked at two horses where there should be three. The beasts were staring at Axel wide-eyed.

"She snuck off! I can't believe this! What a bitch! 'We'll talk about it in the morning.' Ha! She never could trust anything past her own nose. Damn damn damn damn!" He kicked the log he'd sat on last night, then kicked it again twice as hard. "I'll crack her skull, I'll, I'll boil her alive! Damned, arrogant..." he groped for words.

Marya tried to say, "We can probably catch her," but her voice came out as a croak. Damn this planet! Every bone in her body ached, as if she were a tree slowly freezing up with the onset of winter. And her skin—it itched from the fabric touching her as if a thousand fire ants were biting her.

Axel made a chopping motion with his hand. "To hell with her. We'll find Jordan. We know where she's going. She's going to face down Armiger herself. Of all the arrogant..." Again, he seemed to lose his vocabulary. He switched languages, maybe to disguise the hurt tone that had crept into his voice.

Marya levered herself up. Axel had started jamming things into his pack, pausing now and then to stare down the road. He looked down, muttered, "She never really trusted me," in an unbelieving tone, and then shook himself.

"All right, Marya," he said. "Let's go."

With an effort, she transcended her discomfort. "Where?" she asked, squinting at him.

"To find Jordan. He's still running from the Winds, and it's our fault. The only way he'll be safe is if we get him off planet."

How to put this? "Axel... I understand your impulse to help this man. But Calandria's half-right. We need to do something to attack the larger problem."

"What larger problem?"

"The Winds."

He stopped stuffing the pack. "What in hell's name can we do?"

Marya stretched. "We continue signalling for a ship, you're right about that. Meanwhile, though, we go back."

"Back where?"

"To Memnonis. To steal the corpse of this man Turcaret."

Calandria paused at the crest of a hill and looked back the way she'd come. She felt a vague disquiet, leaving like this.

The feeling raised old memories. She remembered crying for days after overhearing that the children she'd thought her friends, had been hired as her playmates by her wealthy mother. Now she felt the same almost-guilty feeling she used to have when leaving residence parties early and alone, at the Academy. She always reached a point where she could accept no more closeness. Her basic alienation came back to haunt her. When that happened she had to leave, and today she was leaving Axel and Marya. It was not, she told herself, that she was afraid of the Winds; if she were, she would have agreed to his plan to leave Ventus as quickly as possible. No, she had come here for a purpose; her resolve was greater than his, that was all.

She chewed on the reasons for her leaving him as she rode. It was easy to suppose that she was saving Axel and Marya from unnecessary risk. It was also true that every day they left Armiger alone, he moved a step closer to taking over the vast and invisible machine that surrounded her. What it finally came down to, however, was that she and Axel could never work together as a team. Calandria liked to pass like a ghost through the worlds she visited. She was the perfect chameleon, adopting personalities and appearances as they suited her. By tomorrow she would have changed, and no one, possibly not even Axel, would recognize her. This was the right way to do the job she had come to do: by dancing around the edges of the human world, darting in only for the quick surgery that would remove the cancer she had come to kill.

Axel wanted to marry every woman he met, and get drunk with every man. He was probably headed for some inn now, to drown his anger at her in a tankard or two. Well. When they met again it would be apologies all around, she was sure. She would have to plan how to conduct those. She didn't want to lose Axel's friendship, after all. Certainly not over their work.

Jordan... Once she killed Armiger, the link, and with it the thing that made the Winds interested in him, would be gone. He would be just a normal man again. And with any luck, he would use what she'd taught him to get rich.

She was doing the right thing.

Her thoughts turned easily to Armiger. How to pursue, how to kill him? Her eyelids flickered; her horse walked on; and Calandria began to drop the Lady May persona, becoming once more the hunter.

26

The landscape was all curves. Gentle undulating dunes of a wonderfully pale tan color stretched off into a hazy horizon. The sky was full of rounded, white balls of cloud. The sun was bright, but it wasn't hot, which somewhat dashed Jordan's preconceptions about what deserts were like. The rolling hills, though, the color, and the taste of grit in his mouth were all the way he'd imagined.

They had been travelling for several days now. To his own surprise, Jordan felt pretty good. For once he wasn't under the control of somebody else. He could plan the day's travel, set their pace, and admire the scenery as he wished. His thoughts seemed to be getting clearer with each morning that he woke to find himself master of his own fate.

Tamsin's shoulders were slumped like the dunes. The farther they went into the desert, the more despondent she became. She had not spoken about what she expected to find here, but Jordan had his suspicions. None of those thoughts were good.

He walked his horse up next to hers. The horses were a bit nervous in this vast emptiness, but Jordan had Ka constantly scouting for water holes, and so far they had been lucky. At one hole the water had been a red color, and Ka said it was poisonous. Jordan had commanded the water to purify itself, and it had.

Miracles like that should have puffed him up with pride, but they did nothing to penetrate Tamsin's air of gloom, and that was his main concern right now. He had no miracle to cure her of her grief.

She glanced wearily at him as he matched her pace. "How are you doing?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I dunno."

Jordan took a pull from the waterskin he had bought in a hamlet outside Rhiene. "Shall I tell you a story?"

She considered this idea. "What kind of a story? I don't want you to cheer me up."

"Well, I could tell you something depressing, then."

"No."

"How about something that's just true?"

"I don't want—" she gulped. "To hear a story."

They rode on in silence for a while. Jordan was thinking. Eventually he asked, "Have you ever seen the queen's summer palace?"

"No."

"You want me to describe it to you?"

Tamsin sat up straighter. "Look, you don't have to—okay, why not. But not like it is now, all covered in blood. Tell me what it used to look like before the war."

Of course Jordan had never seen it that way, because Armiger had arrived well into the siege. He could imagine it though, with his mental blueprints and eye for the architectural detail buried under the siege scaffolding. And there were many places inside that were untouched.

"They built it in a valley where there's a tiny oasis, centuries ago. The first building was a chapel of some kind—you can still see traces of it in the stonework at the base of the high tower. It's all built of stone the same color as the sand we're riding over. Now there's a big ring wall around the oasis. This has five big towers on it, and one smaller. The biggest tower, on the east side, has a big causeway stretching up to it, and you'd think that that would be gate, but the entrance there was bricked up centuries ago. It's the west tower that has the main entrance.

"If you come in the main gate you're channeled between two more walls to the main keep. This tower is huge, Tamsin! It must have six floors, at least, and it steps at two points. Sometimes the queen walks around these balconies and she can look out over the hills and watch the sunset. Her chambers are in this tower, high above the earth.

"Let's see... if you come in the main doors of the keep, you're channeled again through it, to the great hall which is a big rectangular building attached to the keep on its east side. The great hall is magnificent. It's buttressed, with a pitched roof, with mullioned arched windows and a beautiful staggered triple lancet window on the east facade—"

"A what? What does it look like?"

"Oh. One time when Armiger walked through the banquet hall he looked up at it. It's three very tall arched windows separated by thin mullions—pillars, you know. The glass is leaded in a flame-like pattern. Very beautiful. But I only caught a glimpse of it, because Armiger never looked at it again.

"Anyway, the queen's garden lies south of the great hall. Then there's houses and shops all around the foot of the keep on its north and south sides. The rest of the ground inside the big ring wall is full of tents now. The rest of the queen's army. But I guess it was parade grounds and so on before the war."

He did not tell her that the beautiful copper roof of the great hall was holed in a dozen places by Parliament's steam cannon, or that the arched windows were half shattered, nor that the lovely pink marble floor of the banquet hall was almost invisible under a maze of stacked provisions.

She listened as he went on to describe the gardens, which remained untouched, and the little cobbled streets that crowded against the foot of the keep. She seemed grateful for the distraction. And as he painted in words a picture of the palace in better times, Armiger sat like some gargoyle atop the highest parapet of the keep, and wondered what was to come in the next days.

Megan touched his elbow. Armiger awoke from a deep reverie; it was near sunset. For hours now he had been lost in transcendent thought.

"What's the matter?" she asked. He examined her in the fading light. Megan's face was thinner than when he had met her, but she also looked younger, somehow. He found himself smiling.

"I'm sorry I brought you here," he said.

"Why?" He could see she was trying not to interpret what he'd said the wrong way.

"The assault will begin soon. It has to. I can see Lavin's running out of supplies—the number of wagons arriving every day has dropped off sharply. I think Parliament is choking off his budget now that it thinks it's won."

"Are we going to die?" She asked it like she might ask any reasonable question.

"I can protect us against the soldiers. But the Winds are still searching for me, and the attack is bound to draw their attention. If they don't intervene directly, they might still see me. Then, yes, we may be lost."

She held out her hand, and he took it as he stepped down off the crenel. "Then let's leave," she said. "Surely we can sneak out of here."

He hesitated. "We could."

"Then let's!"

"A week ago I would have said yes. After all, I've learned all I can from the queen. Or all I care to," he added ruefully. "And there lies the problem."

"What do you mean?"

He looked out at Parliament's army, a city of tents sprawled in an arc to the southwest of the palace. Hundreds of thin lines of smoke rose from campfires there.

"Once," he said quietly, "I was a god. Then it seemed a reasonable desire to rule the world. That is what I came here to do. I needed to learn the Achilles' Heel of the Winds. My other agents could not uncover the secret, so I came here to the one person in the world who, it was said, knew the most about them. But along the way, my goals... changed."

She smiled. "Are you complimenting me?"

"Yes, but it's not just been you." He kissed her. "I've started remembering. There was a time, ancient now, when I was free, simply a man like any other. Those memories are returning, and..."

How could he describe it to her? Such a memory would come to him like the wind after a storm, full of sweet scent and alert joy. There had been a time when his hand was just his hand, and not one instrument of many in the service of vast intricate schemes. When his eye would light on a beautiful person or place, and simply rest content, with no calculation of its utility. When he began to remember this way, Armiger had also begun to recognize such moments in those around him. The moment that unlocked this recognition had been seeing, on Megan's face, a simple span of pleasure as she savored then swallowed some warm broth from the queen's kitchen. For two, three seconds Megan had thought nothing, merely tasted and enjoyed. And it came to Armiger that it had been seven hundred years since he had experienced such a moment.

"It's something that connects me to all these people," he said, gesturing to include both the palace and the besieging army. "Before, they were counters on a board. Now, somehow, they've become like me. I know it can't make any sense to you."

"Ai," she snapped, yanking on his hair so that he laughed. "Of course it makes sense, silly. You were a child, and now you're growing up. All those years you were one of them, you were like an infant, all want. So now you're surprised when you start to become like the rest of us? You are sometimes a very, very silly man."

For a while he was completely flummoxed, and just stared at her while she laughed. Then he caught her around the waist. "Maybe I am. You made me care about you, and now I've come to care about these people too. And I can help them."

She sobered. "Help? How?"

"I was a general once. I can be again." He kissed her forehead and stood back. "It's time to abandon the plans of the entity that enslaved me all these centuries," he said. "And time to start making my own."

Megan stepped back. "Armiger—"

"Galas is the most deserving ruler on this world," he said. "I can't let her be destroyed. Nor her people."

Megan turned and went to the crenel, where she looked out over the sea of tents for some time. Then she looked back, her face a play of rose-lit arcs in the sunset. "You must be careful," she said. "You may come to care too much, you know. And that could cost us more than all your uncaring ever could."

Lavin opened Galas' book once again, unable to resist but reluctant. By lamplight, he read.

Here is a dilemma. We doubt anyone else in history has faced such a dilemma as this. For when One sits at the window to watch the people go about their business, One sees such contentment and joy in simple things, expressed in the routines of the market and the street. And indeed, most people find ways to be happy, most of the time.

But We see also the town square with its gallows, and know that only the healthy walk these streets because only they are still alive. We know that only the strong-minded walk smiling in these streets because only they have won the freedom to do so. We do not see the isolated, failed or victimized people huddling in the back rooms of shops, chained in bedrooms or scattered like dust across the far fields.

If We propose to create something better, then We propose to end this world. That is how it will seem to these happy people, at least. For it may be necessary to make of the rich paupers, and make of the poor princes. In two generations, or ten, all will be well. For now, though, misery! And more and more. Would it not be better to leave well enough alone? If We stay the course, we shall see those smiling faces, bustling streets until Our dying day.

We are certain no one has ever faced such a dilemma. So We are inconsolable.

This is truth, though, that Our fury rises like an ocean storm at the thought that even one poor soul toils in misery out of sight, while these happy folk go about their business. True, it is not their responsibility, and no one should begrudge them what little happiness they can find. It is Our responsibility, however. They may never understand our motives, or see the full scope of the grand plan to be unfolded. We can only hope that their children grow up to be happy, and free, whether they revile our name or not.

He could almost hear her voice saying these words. They were so like her, when in the blush of youth she had fairly burst with idealistic passion. At the time, Lavin had barely understood what she was saying, beyond feeling a certain unease at her strange heresies. She was more intelligent than he, they both knew that, and he had always felt that they both accepted that he did not understand her.

In these diaries, though, he was finding so much loneliness that at times the words brought him near tears. He regretted now not striving to understand her better when he'd had the chance—perhaps he could have changed the course of her plans, and had she not been so lonely, perhaps she would not have chosen fanaticism. He suspected she had ultimately lived up to her reputation of madness because it was the only role left to her in her isolation.

They had met the second time at the military academy. It was some six months after the ball where he had received her approving glance. There were some young girls in regular attendance at academy balls, but Lavin rarely attended; being the faithful son of a rather dour provincial baron, he distrusted such affairs. Consequently he had lived on memories of that one moment of recognition by her. When he heard on the parade ground that the mad princess had been spotted riding through town in man's attire, his heart began to pound and he missed his cue in the horse maneuver he was practising. At mess that day he had discreetly asked after the source of the rumor. It was true, it seemed: Galas was here, staying in an inn not a kilometer from the academy.

Two of the lads began to joke that the princess was here looking for a wife, or at least a concubine. Her mannish ways were a popular scandal, after all. Lavin threw down his cutlery and challenged them both to duels on the spot.

This altercation might have ended in tragedy had not the quartermaster intervened. He was a huge man who imposed his authority by purely physical means. After warning all three of them that any duellists stood to be thrown out of the academy, he beat them all black and blue. Lavin was not greatly upset by this—at least the disrespectful had been punished as well.

The quartermaster was perhaps a bit too thorough in his lesson, because Lavin spent the next two days vomiting and staggering due to some injury to his inner ear. It would come back to haunt him at critical moments for the rest of his life. This time, it kept him in bed until he restlessly demanded a leave of absence. He was given a week.

Looking back, he supposed he would never have worked up the courage to visit Galas' inn had he not been dizzy and bruised—already beaten, both literally and figuratively. His mood was fey and unconcerned as he entered the inn, and inquired as to the whereabouts of the princess.

The barkeep smirked at him—Lavin had a black eye, a cauliflower ear and walked with a distinct stagger—and pointed behind him. He turned to find those same dark eyes of memory gazing at his.

She sat in the company of six of the king's guards. This was her regular bodyguard, men she was comfortable with; just now they were trying to drink one another under the table. She was losing.

Lavin planted himself in their midst and introduced himself. They had met oh so briefly at a ball, he said. Surely she did not remember him.

Oh, but she did.

His bruises impressed the bodyguards. She told Lavin later that otherwise they would have pitched him out the door, as they did with the merchants and effete local noble's sons who came to pay homage. Lavin was no courtier; he wanted no political favours. So they let him stay—but only if he drank to match them.

Never before or since in his life had Lavin been so sick. His only consolation was a dim memory of the princess crouched beside him also throwing up the indeterminate remains of today's—or perhaps several day's—lunch.

Deep and lasting bonds are forged in such moments.

It seemed that by achieving the worst nausea possible, he had found a standard by which to measure his injury. Over the next two days he made a remarkable recovery, primarily by discovering in her company sufficient motivation to overcome his dizziness.

Lately, reading the secret diary, he had recovered the memory of her voice. He remembered now how they had debated politics in those first days. She was passionate and angry, and he was willing to indulge her for he was learning she was not the insane creature of reputation, but a young lady cursed with an intelligence that had no outlet within the life prescribed for her. Lavin understood ambition. He wanted to lead armies, be a great general like the heroes whose faces were carved in the keystones of the academy. So he and she became soulmates, even though he censored from his own awareness half of what she said to him.

He had not been fair, he saw in retrospect. That was why, when disaster struck in the form of her coronation, he had not been invited to her side. She knew that though he understood her heart, he could never agree with her mind, and that as her consort he would have been miserable.

Ah! He could tell himself this, it sounded so objective and neatly encapsulating; the pain was still there. He had not gone to the throne with her.

The miraculous did happen, though. He was the first, and as far as he knew the only man she ever invited into her bed. The first time was at the end of that week's leave. He had won over her bodyguards by dint of being disarmingly frank about his affection for her. They did not interfere when on that last evening she threw him a significant look and retired early, and he quickly made an excuse and followed.

The affair endured two years. They strove for utmost discretion, so meetings were rare and hurried. For all that, or maybe because of it, their passion was almost unendurably intense. Then, she conceived of the sea expedition that was to separate them for the next eighteen years. He learned of it in a letter she sent the day before her departure. The next news he had was of her triumphant entry into the capital bearing the seal of the Winds, there to unseat her father the king. Then nothing, except a single scribbled note received six months later telling him Court was dangerous, that she would meet him as soon as she could escape its entanglements.

They did meet again—once or twice a year at formal courtly functions, and three times she had allowed him to visit her privately, to walk in her gardens and halls alone with her for an hour or two. They never shared a bed again.

Now he rose and went to the flap of his tent. The summer palace lay in darkness, surrounded by an ocean of campfires.

Tomorrow, he would meet her again. The letters of parlay lay on his table now, next to her diaries. She wanted to talk.

He wanted to talk.

Lavin shuddered, and closed the flap of the tent against the chill. He wished he could sleep, but it was impossible. He wished... he wished he could run.

Take her, and run.

He moved to the map table, where the sappers' charts lay, and drew his newly-ringed finger along a line that crossed the palace wall. He had rewarded the thief Enneas with his life for allowing this line to be drawn. If all worked according to plan, he would shower the old grave robber with jewels.

Take her and run.

Maybe he would.

27

"Bring me some water, boy. What's your name?"

"Cal," she said.

The soldier grunted. "I'm Maenin. That's Crouson, and the bastard across the fire is the Winckler. We been with this thing from the beginning. You're pretty scrawny," he observed. "How long you been with the army?"

"Not long," she said shortly. Her voice was an octave lower than normal. She liked the way it reverberated in her chest.

Maenin was a huge, hairy man. Calandria thought he smelled as if something had crawled into his boots and died. She handed him a cup of water and sat back on the stone she had chosen as her seat.

A vista of campfires and tents spread out down the hillside, and in the distance the walls of the palace spread in black swathes across the plain. Diadem gleamed whitely, outshining the milky way. Somewhere up there, the Desert Voice was debris or imprisoned. She could only hope that someone would come to investigate when the ship failed to report in.

Meanwhile she had to concentrate on thinking and acting like a man. She spat at the fire and scratched the short hair on her head. On the way here she had modified her body in subtle ways; that and a layer of grime made her look like a young man. With all that, Maenin still seemed to see femininity in her, so it came down to how well she could act. Shakespeare had been uncommonly optimistic about a woman's chance of successfully masquerading as male, she had decided.

"Oh ho! Seen any fighting? No, eh? Simple farmboy, off on an adventure, are we?"

Cal shrugged. "Soldiers burned our house. Father couldn't afford to feed us all. I had to join."

Maenin brayed a laugh. "Now that's the way to recruit! Hey—you're not from one of those pervert towns we burned, are you?"

"No. Just a town."

"Good thing, 'cause if you were you'd be dog meat."

"I heard they're bad," she said.

"Ho—you don't know the half of it."

"Have you been in one?"

"Boy, I been in 'em all. Burned 'em all, too. Burned 'em right to the ground. Same as we're gonna do that rockpile over there." He flipped his hand in the direction of the palace.

"All because the queen built those towns?"

"No! Where you been through all this, boy? Don't you know nothing?"

Calandria pretended to examine her boots. "It didn't seem so important to know about it, before the soldiers came."

"The queen, she knew about these oases in the desert for years. Never told anyone. We coulda moved out there, made a good living. She didn't care, she wanted 'em to house her damn perverts. So when Parliament found out about 'em they ask her what she's doing with 'em. She tells Parliament it's none of our business! Same time, she's asking for all kinds of money, extra taxes, from the nobles. She been bleeding us good folk dry, to feed her perverts!

"So Parliament demands she give the towns back. Stop making these pervert things out there in the desert. And she says no."

"She dissolved Parliament," said the Winckler.

"Know what that means, boy? She told all 'em nobles to get packing! She'd run the country directly." Maenin shook his head. "She wanted to turn us all into perverts! The towns were just the start. After them, the cities, who knows what we'd be having to say? All I know is I'll never take orders from no pervert."

"The nobles who make up the Upper House formed an army," said the Winckler. "They called on General Lavin to command it. Except he wasn't a general, then. He was from one of the old families, they gave him the job because he had pull."

Maenin stood up. "Shut up! The General's a good man. He's kept us alive right to the palace, and he'll keep us alive when we go in. We're gonna win, and it's 'cause of him."

The Winckler raised his hands apologetically. "You're right, Maenin. You are indeed right. To start with, the queen's army was bigger than ours. We licked 'em, and it was 'cause of the General."

"Damn right." Maenin sat down.

"How did you do that?" Calandria asked, trying to project boyish curiosity.

Maenin and the Winckler told how Lavin had predicated his campaign on knowledge of stockpiles the queen kept in the desert. Summer was traditionally the time for campaigning; in northern Ventus, war stopped when the snows came. Iapysia's southern desert remained warm, but the population was mostly concentrated along the northern border of the desert, and the seashore.

Lavin launched a phony campaign in summer, and drew the queen's forces on a long retreat along the oceanside. He had the navy on his side, so the queen's forces could not pursue his army too far.

Then he struck inland, and captured the desert stockpiles. When the end of the campaign season arrived, the queen's forces had exhausted their supplies, but Lavin's forces had several months' worth of grain and dried fish. They drove north, as the queen's forces suffered desertion and attrition. By the spring of this year, they had taken two-thirds of the country. The queen retreated to her summer palace, and Lavin marched a small force into the desert to clean out her experimental towns, and strike at her palace from the south. That force had encountered no resistance, and arrived here sooner than expected. The queen's forces were engaged west of the palace by the bulk of Lavin's army. He had no time for a decent siege of the walled summer palace. Lavin would have to throw them against the walls in a day or two, or face the retreating royal army.

"It's okay, though," drawled the Winckler. "He's got a plan, as usual."

Maenin squinted through the roiling wood smoke. "What? What plan?"

"Haven't you heard? He's going to meet the queen tomorrow, to get her to surrender. If he does it, we don't have to fight at all. The war will be over!"

"Shit. Really?" Maenin shook his head. "That'd be something. Be too bad, though, I kinda wanted to taste one of those noble ladies she's hiding there. The perverts were no fun. They had no spirit. I want a woman who'll try and claw my eyes out!" He laughed, and the others joined in. Calandria showed her teeth.

They speculated for a while about how well the noble ladies would perform, and even the queen if they should catch her. They teased Cal for being a virgin, and promised to show the boy how to rape if they had to storm the palace.

Cal expressed her gratitude.

Maenin yawned. "Fine. Sleep time. The bastards 'll wake us up before dawn, and the Winds know what'll happen tomorrow. Where you sleepin', boy?"

"By the fire," she said quickly.

"Wise." Maenin glared at the Winckler. "Stay in sight, that's my advice." He stood, stretched, and walked scratching to his tent.

The others drifted away over the next hour, leaving Calandria to tend the fire. The supply of wood was meagre, but she built the fire up anyway—not because she was cold, but because she had a use for it.

When she was confident she would not be interrupted, she rummaged in her pack and brought out a slim metal tube. She uncapped it and poured a few small metal pills into her hand. She arranged these and peered at them in the firelight.

There was fine writing on the flat beads. When she had found the one she was looking for, she put the others back in the tube, and dropped the chosen one into the center of the fire. Using the tip of her sword, she maneuvered it onto the hottest coals at the core of the flames.

From another pouch, Calandria took some rusty metal rivets she had found on the way here. She dropped these into the fire near the metal bead. Then she sat back to wait.

It would take a couple of hours for the seed to sprout and grow, but she couldn't afford to nap. If someone came, she would have to distract them, lest they look into the fire and see something impossible gleaming there.

Lavin ignored the glares of hate that followed him. He and his honor guard of two were safe, he knew. Galas would never let him come to harm. So as he walked he did not look at the soldiers ranked on either side of the narrow courtyard that led to the citadel, but cast his gaze above ground level to examine the damage his siege engines had caused to the buildings. The defenders had hung bright banners across the worst of it to frustrate such scrutiny; the festive cloth looked incongruous against blackened stonework, above the pinched faces of grim soldiers.

He felt more optimistic than he had in weeks. Galas had agreed to parley. Now that her situation was hopeless, she was finally seeing reason. This madness had to stop, and there was no reason it should end with deaths, hers included. All the while she hid in her fortress, and he threw men and stones at the walls, Lavin had been in an agony of fear that some one of those stones would find her, or that dysentery would run through the palace, or her own people assassinate her to escape. He couldn't live with the thought.

But he couldn't live with the thought of anyone else being in charge of this siege, either. She would lose; he had always known that. There had never been any question of his joining her cause, because all he could do for her was delay the inevitable. He might win her admiration and love, but she would be brought down at last, and he wouldn't be able to stop it.

This way, the outcome was in his hands. And though she might hate him, this way he might save her.

In his late-night conversations with Hesty, Lavin had lied about all these things. He had claimed to hate Galas, and the fact that he hated the things she had done leant credence to his words. But it hurt him to talk so, and he often wondered if Hesty saw that, and doubted.

Maybe it would all end today. The thought was uplifting, and he had to restrain himself from smiling. To smile, while walking through the ranks of the enemy, would be cruel. Lavin did not think he was a cruel man.

He ran his gaze across the battlements anyway, measuring for weaknesses. All responsibility lay on his shoulders, after all; he had won this far because he was able to plan for hard realities without flinching. If Galas rejected his ultimatum he would need to know what walls to throw his men against.

One of the banners hung by the defenders caught his eye. This one was bright blue, with a gold-braided knot as its central design. The banner had been unfurled above the gate to the palace citadel, on a wall that appeared quite undamaged. He would have to walk under it to enter.

Lavin had only visited the summer palace once, many years ago. The visit had coincided with the spring festival, and there were many banners flying at the time. Strange coincidence, that they should be hung again now, for such different purpose.

But, the banner over the citadel gate was the spring banner itself. On that earlier occasion, it had hung in the palace's reception hall, alone in a shaft of sunlight.

Under it, he had told Galas he loved her.

"Are you all right, sir?"

He had stopped walking. The courtyard seemed to recede for a second. He leaned on the arm of one of the guards.

"I'm fine," he grated. Then he stepped forward again, eyes now fixed on the banner.

She must have had it hung in his path deliberately. It was an intimate, hence cruel, reminder of all that they had once meant to one another. Now his chest hurt, and he could feel the muscles in his face pulling back. I must look like these men, he thought, just another soldier with pain indelibly stamped on his face.

Yet below the banner stood an open door. She had reminded him of their past; and she had opened a way for him.

Maybe things would work out. Somehow, though, nothing had prepared Lavin for what he was feeling now. In all his planning, he had been able to avoid his own feelings, lest they stand in the way of his saving her from herself. By this one gesture Galas had let him know that whatever happened during the next few hours, for him it would be like walking through fire.

Inside, the citadel showed no signs of the siege. The sumptuous furnishings were still in place, and liveried servants waited to guide Lavin and his guide up the marble flights to Galas' audience chamber. Last time he was here, there had been nobility everywhere, posing lords and ladies smiling and exchanging the barbed words of their intrigues. The candelabra overhead, now dark, had blazed brightly, bringing life to the fantastical figures painted on the ceiling. He remembered Galas, on his arm, pointing up at the images, and telling him stories about them. She was girlish for once, and his heart had melted so that he barely heard the words themselves, so entranced was he by their tone.

He steeled himself to his purpose, and looked down to floor level. The thief Enneas had schooled him in the layout of the basements of the palace. Enneas had never been above ground level here; Lavin never below it. Together, they had assembled a rough map of Enneas's secret path into the building. Lavin had only moments as he walked to try to spot the entrance they believed led down to the catacombs.

He was nearly at the top of the marble flight when he spotted it, below and beside the stairs. The archway was invisible from the main entrance because it was behind the immense sweep of the stairs' bannisters.

Shoulders slumping in relief, Lavin let himself be guided forward down the palace's main hall, and thence to another flight. The archway was there, and if Enneas was right, below it the maze of halls contained a chink that led to a 'spirit walk'. The spirit walk would be just a narrow gap in the masonry at the palace's wall, an exit for ghosts who could slip through an aperture only centimeters broad. According to Enneas, this walk had once lain under the processional causeway that ran through the east gate and to a temple complex that was now ruined. Over centuries, thieves had widened the spirit walk so that one or two people at a time could squeeze through it into the precincts of the palace.

The ruins existed, and so did the hole Enneas had said led to the tunnel. In any other situation, Lavin would have dispatched sappers into it, to undermine the east gate. Bringing the gate tower down would save a lot of lives he would otherwise lose storming the walls.

There was only one life Lavin wanted to save. Knowing that Enneas was right both about what lay in the ruins, and about where a certain door existed within the palace, heartened him. He had an extra force to use to outflank Galas, if it came to that.

The audience chamber lay at the top of the second flight of stairs. The sweep of the main hall lay behind him, and Lavin heard the sounds of men massing there. He would not give them the satisfaction of seeing him turn to look, but he knew they were there to kill him at the slightest signal. More soldiers flanked the entrance to the audience chamber. They had taken his weapons at the palace gate, but obviously still feared an assassination attempt.

Two men carrying halberds stepped in front of him at the door. One of them scowled, and said, "She insists on seeing you alone. None of us trusts you for a second, general. I'm going to be waiting with my hand on the door handle, and the archers' bows will be cocked. If we hear the slightest sound we don't like, you'll be dead in a second. Do you understand?"

Lavin glared back. "I understand," he said tightly. His heart was pounding, but not because he was afraid of this man, or in fact of any man. Again, he felt himself becoming disembodied, and strove to breathe deeply to anchor himself in the moment.

The door opened. Lavin took one step forward, then another. And then he was inside the room.

The hall looked exactly as it had that other time. The weight of memory threatened to crush him for a moment; he blinked, and saw the queen.

She stood near the throne, hands clasped together. She appeared composed, but, he supposed, so did he. With age, one showed less and less of the emotions one actually felt, and hers had never been easy to read.

He moved tentatively toward her. In the autumn light flung by the tall windows he could see lines of care around her mouth that had never been there before, and streaks of grey in her hair. She looked very small and vulnerable, and the ache in his heart grew almost overwhelming.

He cleared his throat, but now that he was here, he couldn't speak. He had even rehearsed a speech, but the words seemed vapid and irrelevant now. Falling back on ceremony, he bowed.

"Lavin," she said almost inaudibly. He straightened, and they made eye contact, for only a second before each broke off.

"I am glad to see you again," she said. He could hear the guardedness in her voice.

"I, too, am... glad," he said. His own voice sounded husky to his ears. She seemed to listen intently as he spoke, as if she were trying to discover something behind the actual words.

She held out her hand. "Don't stand so far away. Please."

He came to her, and took her outstretched hand. Slowly, he raised his eyes to hers.

"I see lines," she said, "that weren't there before."

"You haven't aged at all," he replied with a smile.

"Lavin." The reproach in her tone was gentle, but it stung him deeply. "Don't lie to me."

Face burning, he let go of her hand.

"Come," she said, gesturing nervously. "Let's not sit in this drafty place. It won't help." She led him to a door at the side of the chamber. Beyond this was a small room with a lit fireplace, single table and two chairs. Galas clapped her hands, and the room's other door opened. Two serving girls approached timidly.

"Have you dined yet today?" she asked. Lavin shook his head. She waved to the girls, who curtsied and exited. As Lavin and the queen seated themselves, the girls returned with mutton and stew, a bottle of wine and two goblets. Strange, Lavin thought, that he had never dined in such privacy with the queen, in all the years he had known her. Did it really take the total overthrow of tradition and royal honor for them to reach such a simple act? He shied away from the thought.

The girls left, and they were alone again. Galas gestured at the food, and smiled.

The simple act of sipping the broth released a knot of tension in Lavin's shoulders. He indulged himself in the food for a moment, while she poured wine for both of them. By the time she had reached for her own spoon, he felt in command of himself again.

"I've come to make sure we can do this again," he said, gesturing to the food. "And more."

Galas sipped her wine, brows knit quizzically. "What do you mean?"

He borrowed from the speech he'd prepared. The idea for this argument had come from his reading of her own captured journals. "You're acting like there's only one possible outcome to all this. But everything you've ever done—the very reason we are where we are today—is because you've refused to accept that there should only be one way of doing things. You've fought inevitability your whole life. Why change now?"

She was silent for a while. "Maybe I'm tired," she said at last in a small voice.

"Galas, you've used nothing but your own strength to try to change the whole world. You've never accepted that of anyone else. Maybe it is time for you to rest. Is that so bad?"

"Yes!" she flared. "You're saying you've come to take my kingdom from me. I already knew that. Say something new, if you really have alternatives."

"You're acting like there's only victory or death possible here. I'm saying it's not too late. Victory is impossible for you now, but death isn't inevitable. That's what I've come to prevent!"

"Victory wouldn't be impossible," she said, "if I'd had you at my side."

He had expected her to say it, but he still had to look away as he replied. "That's unfair. What choice have I ever had?"

"Lavin, why did you side with Parliament?" She looked stricken. "You know I never wanted any of this. I never wished harm on my country. It was Parliament who started this war, and you who so expertly destroyed everything I've ever held dear. And yet, you, of all people..."

"You were going to lose," he said. "I was trained at the military academy, groomed to be a general. When Parliament decided on war, I sat in on the planning session. I was on your side. Of course I was! How do you think I felt, sitting in the gallery, listening to them insult you, laugh about bringing you down? They were a pack of traitors. But I saw the plans they were laying out. They were going to win. Even if I'd stolen the plans, and brought them to you, it wouldn't have helped. It would only have prolonged the slaughter.

"The night I really knew in my heart that they would win, I sat in my bedchamber and cried. What could I do? I was the highest-born graduate of the Academy. To appease both the nobles and the commons, Parliament would ask me to lead the army against you.

"I could stand aside. Or I could join you, and die at your side. Or I could lead the army myself—and then at least if I was in control, if the responsibility were mine, maybe we could salvage something, it didn't have to come to this!" He sat back, the ache in his chest making it hard to breathe. "If anyone else led the army, how could I prevent your death?"

"There was another choice," she said coldly.

"What? How can you say that? Don't you think I thought of them all?" He grabbed his goblet and drank, glaring at her.

"You could have misled the army, Lavin. You could have fought badly." She smiled sadly. "You could have let me beat you."

"Not a single day's gone by when I didn't think of doing that," he said. "Your generals never provided me the opportunity. Your nobility just weren't a match for the Academy. But no, wait, it's more than that. Listen, I've stood on a hillside, and watched ten thousand men fight in terror and rage in the valley below me. I've had men on horseback, waiting for my orders, and there was a moment when I could have failed to give an order to let the cavalry flank your men. The order was crucial. If I gave it, thousands would live on both side. If I didn't, I would stand on this hillside, and watch while men who trusted me were put to the sword." He faced her grimly, hands gripping the table in front of him. "Perhaps every day before that, and every day since, I've thought that I could deliberately send men out to fail and die. I'm a man capable of hard decisions, Galas. But at that moment, I wasn't able to do it. And however much I might lie to myself every day, in the end I would act the same way again. Everyone has a moral line they can't cross. For me, that was it."

She stared at him in silence. Lavin loosened his grip on the tabletop, and numbly turned back to his food.

"So what are your terms?" she whispered.

"More people don't need to die. At this moment you've got Parliament in a position where, if you don't surrender, there'll be a bloodbath. That will not be popular. Neither is regicide. With no one on the throne, the state will be in chaos. However hopeless things look, they still need you." He looked straight at her. "I can guarantee your safety. You'll be placed under arrest by Parliament, but it will be my men who guard you. Parliament may hold the purse strings to the army, but after all this time, the men are mine. No one else could have guaranteed your safety after all that's happened. But I can."

"I believe you," she said with a touching smile. "And this house arrest—what does it mean?"

"You remain the head of state. Parliament rules in your place. An arrangement is made for a proper heir. You renounce all your political, economic and social experiments."

"I can't do that."

"You must! Otherwise you remain the head of a rebel movement, who will act in your name whether you lead them or not. The chaos will just continue."

She reached across the table, and took his hand. "My love, you're asking me to throw away everything my life has meant. How is that different from death?"

"It's gone anyway. Your choice is how to cope with the fact. Your options are suicide, or to rise above it, as you've always risen above things." His mouth was dry now, and his heart pounding. It all came down to this conversation, and this moment in it.

She shook her head, but not at his words. "Lavin, did you just tell me that you led the army against me because you loved me?"

"Yes."

"Worse and worse," she said. "Worse and worse!" She stood up; her chair fell over.

The door opened a crack, but she waved her hand impatiently, and it closed again. "Every day of my life the people who've guarded me have taken away some thing just as I came to realize I loved it." She dragged her hands through her hair, flung it back, and came to stand over him. "You've taken it upon yourself to do that too. What do I have left?"

He shook his head.

"I loved you because you never tried to guard me," she said. "You were never my keeper. Yours was the one face at a banquet I could look at when I needed to share a laugh, or a real smile. I would have made you my consort if I could have, Lavin."

He shrank back from the directness of her gaze. He could hear the bitterness in his own voice as he said, "You defied every other tradition. Why didn't you try to overthrow that one too?" Custom and politics had dictated Galas marry a royal son of a neighboring nation; she had avoided doing so.

It was her turn to look away. "I was afraid."

"Afraid? Of offending tradition? Of Parliament's reaction?"

"Of you."

"Me."

"Afraid of having you; afraid of losing you." She angrily righted her chair and sat down again. "Afraid of everything to do with you. And... I thought we'd have the time... for me to get over that fear."

"We may yet," he said quickly. "Do you still trust me, after all that's happened?"

"I don't know... yes, I do. Lavin, I trust you to follow your heart, even if it leads you into an inferno."

"But do you trust that I love you?"

"Yes."

"Then let me protect you now!"

Galas smiled sadly. "You know me too well. It is not I who am faced with a choice here, my dearest. You knew that when you came. You are the one that has to decide between self-annihilation and love. I've made my choice, and will die for it comfortably. If there is a tortured soul at this table, it is you."

Lavin felt the words as blows. He couldn't respond; all his strategies had evaporated.

She knew him. The greatest doubt and mystery of his life had been whether Galas really understood him; had she really thought deeply about him? Was he real to her, the way she was to him?

She understood him too well.

"Your choice, dearest friend," she continued, "is simple. You will either join me, and turn your men against Parliament now that you have their loyalty; or you will raze my walls, kill my people, and find me dead of poison in my bedchamber."

Her words were so simply spoken he could never have doubted her determination. Inwardly, Lavin reeled in panic. Everything was slipping away. He opened his mouth, almost to surrender to her, for the sake of a few days of bliss before they were defeated and killed. Then he remembered the thief Enneas, and his other option.

He heard himself say, "I come back to where we began. You have defied either-or choices your entire life. You can rise above this dilemma too, and regain your kingdom. Maybe you can pursue your policies in a gentler fashion, and still salvage some of what you worked for. The alternative is to lose all of it, and your life as well."

Her expression had hardened. "Very well. There is another option, but I had hoped not to have to use it. In some ways it is the worst of all."

"Why worst?" He shook his head, not understanding.

"Because I wanted to avoid defeating you, Lavin. I never wanted you as my enemy." She rose before he could reply, and rapped on the chamber's inner door.

Lavin stood, alarmed. Was she about to order his capture or death?

A man stepped into the room. He appeared stern and noble, but Lavin judged him of foreign breeding, since his hair was long and braided. He wore the uniform of the palace guard.

"Your siege will not be easy," Galas said. "General Lavin, meet General Armiger."

Lavin was thunderstruck. Armiger was supposed to be dead! Yet... perhaps he had defected, slipped away from his failing fortunes in Ravenon, at some offer by Galas? It made no sense.

These thoughts raced through his mind as he stepped forward to clasp the hand of his new adversary. "Your reputation precedes you," he said formally.

"Thank you," said Armiger. "Your own skill is respected in every land. I look forward to matching my strength against yours."

Lavin stepped away, and bowed formally. "In that case, your highness, I will take my leave. With General Armiger at your side, I will need to make extra preparations if I am to win the day."

She stood, hands clasped in front of her, and said nothing as he turned to go. Her face was a mask of eloquent sorrow.

Lavin barely noticed the ranks of hostile, waiting soldiers, nor did he hear his own men asking how the meeting had gone. The sun had dimmed in the sky, and touch, hearing and smell had faded like the autumn leaves. Somehow he found himself outside the palace walls, issuing orders in a steady voice as Hesty rode up. Within him raged a storm of emotion such as he had never felt. It overwhelmed reason; he could not have told anyone what he was going through, nor what it meant to him.

At the core of the storm, however, was a single mental image: of General Armiger standing at the side of Queen Galas.

28

The horses had found a road, and Jordan had let them take it. Now he faced the consequences of that decision.

Spreading out below them lay a shallow valley where yellow grain stalks still jutted in regular patterns from sand. The dunes were reclaiming this oasis, and it was just as well, he thought. No one would want to live here now, not among the sad wreckage of so many lives.

This must have been one of the experimental towns. He glanced sidelong at Tamsin, but her face was impassive. Was this collection of burned, broken walls, filled with the wind-tumbled remnants of broken household items, her town?

The scent of charcoal still hung over the place. It didn't help that the sky was leaden grey, had been for days now, and the air cold. Back home, it was probably snowing.

"They didn't even bury them," said Tamsin. She pointed, and he could see that what he had thought was a pile of old clothing, actually had yellowed hands and feet jutting from it. And those rounded shapes... His stomach lurched, and he looked away.

"This was Integer," she said. "The scholar's town. It was entirely self-sufficient, they didn't have to burn it."

"I don't think they did this because they had to," said Jordan.

"I grew up here," said Tamsin, so quietly that Jordan almost didn't hear her.

He looked over quickly. "In this town?"

"No. Another, nearby. I lived there my whole life. And then Parliament burnt it to the ground. They burned them all, I guess."

"But why?"

"The queen," she said, her mouth twisting bitterly. "Queen Galas is a sorceress; she commanded the desals, and the desals made water sprout in the dunes. In those places, she made towns. She offered people land and seed if they settled there. My parents went. A lot of people did—but once you went you couldn't leave. And every town was different. Different rules, and nobody was allowed to travel between them or even know what the other towns' rules were. She used soldiers to move stuff between the towns, like wood and grain and livestock. And the soldiers wouldn't talk to you.

"Uncle used to visit, when I was small. He used to bring me presents. I remember fruit, and little pieces of jewelry mother disapproved of. He was the only person who visited anyone in Callen. Father said it was because he was important to the queen that they let him do it.

"I liked Callen, my town. I didn't think there was anything horrible about it. We worked, we had festivals. Boys and girls went to school. But then one day all these strangers came—people from the other towns. They were fleeing the army. We put some of them up in our house. They were strange... married, but men to men and women to women. Though they had children too. They said the soldiers had burned their town and killed everyone else. We didn't know why.

"I asked my father about it," continued Tamsin. "What had we done that was so wrong? He said it was all the history he'd made me learn, about people being prisoners of the Winds. That they're our enemies." She watched Jordan warily as she said this.

Jordan nodded slowly. Some of the things Armiger and the queen had talked about were starting to make sense. The queen wanted to change the world. That was why her parliament had revolted.

"One day," said Tamsin, "I was hoeing the garden. It's on the edge of town, by the dunes. Suddenly uncle was there. He said I had to follow him quickly, run. We ran into the dunes, and he had a horse there. We rode away to a nearby hill, and there we stopped to look back. The soldiers had come. They looked like ants overruning Callen. I could hear screams, people were running about. Then the houses started to burn."

For a while she stared off into space, knotting her hands together. Her eyes were dry, but her mouth was a hard line.

"I wanted to go back," she said finally. "I couldn't see my parents anywhere. But uncle said we would die too. So we rode away. The next day we came to another oasis, where there was this wagon. And we drove north. That was three months ago." She glanced at him, looked down, and winced. She didn't look up again.

Jordan thought about the story. There was nothing good he could say. "Your uncle brought the soldiers,"

She nodded, still not looking at him. "Or at least he knew exactly when they were coming. And he didn't warn anyone. He just came and snatched me away. I tried to tell myself he had no chance to warn the others. I tried and tried... I let myself believe he had saved me because he was a good man.

She shuddered. "After all, he's just a merchant trying to get back his shop, isn't he? And the soldiers who murdered everyone in this town? After this is all over," she said, "they'll all go back to their farms and shops too, won't they? And they'll live long happy lives, and no one will be the wiser about what they did here."

"We will," was all Jordan could think of to say.

Tamsin flicked the reins, and guided her horse off the road. She didn't want to go down there, he saw with relief. He couldn't have prevented her without using force.

The horses objected to entering the sand. Both animals were tired and seemed sick, though from no cause Jordan or Tamsin could discern. They rolled their eyes now and blew, but as the wind changed and they caught the scent coming from the valley, they accepted the new path.

"If this was Integer, that means we're close," said Tamsin at length. "The desal should be a half-day's journey that way." She pointed southeast.

"How do you know?"

She shrugged. "The towns are all built around a low plateau; it's almost invisible unless you know what to look for. See what looks like walls out there?" She pointed into the heart of the desert, where he did indeed see some reddish lines near the horizon. "The land steps up and up for a while in little man-high clifflets like that. In the center is the desal."

"Good. We could be there by nightfall." He tried to bring an optimistic tone back to his voice.

"They should all die."

He kneed his horse to bring it next to hers. The animal wheezed and made a half-hearted attempt to buck, then complied.

Tamsin was crying. "They should all be hung," she said. "But they won't be. They'll get away with it. They'll laugh about it and then when they're old they'll tell their children how noble they were."

"Tamsin—"

"They killed my, my parents—" She buried her face in her hands. Awkward, he rode alongside her, scratching his neck and scowling at the sands. He might have said something sharp—Jordan had his own miseries, after all, which Tamsin seldom acknowledged—except that he sensed something different in her tears today.

Eventually she said, "It's true. I didn't want to believe it, all this time. I just let Uncle drag me around, and I said to myself, wait, wait, it'll end soon. Like I'd be back home at the end of the adventure, with mom and dad and everything okay again. But it won't end. They burned Callen to the ground like they burned Integer. And I saw it, I remember looking back and seeing smoke coming up over the dunes, and I didn't believe it. Like I didn't believe Uncle knew what was going to happen."

She hesitated, looked away, and said, "I'm a fool."

"A victim," he insisted. "They're the fools."

He thought of the pile of bodies they had seen. Fools, or monsters? For a long moment Jordan felt lost—real men had done that, they were out there still. If men could do that... were the Winds any worse? Maybe their rule was more just than Man's would be.

He closed his eyes, and pictured the queen of Iapysia, standing lost within the fine clutter of her library. But I had to try, she had appealed, to end this long night that has swallowed the whole world.

Tamsin continued to weep, and there were no words he could have said to take away her pain. Some things, once broken, could never be healed.

End this long night...

In an age of miracles, would men still massacre their neighbors? Maybe they would just do it on a far greater scale, once they could command the oceans to drown continents or the earth to swallow cities.

It seemed it must be true since the powerful, who wanted of nothing, were the very ones who commanded these massacres.

The thought filled him with fury—the same fury that had made him run into the night after Emmy, that had made him taunt the Heaven hooks into leaving their destruction of the Boros mansion to chase him. He would not accept this truth. Let them kill him, let the whole world come crashing down when he told Armiger the secrets of the desals. Despite all evidence, he would never accept that such miseries were destined to happen forever.

A short, vertical line wavered on the horizon. The spire of the desal? He would find out soon enough. Then, he would demand that the Winds answer for the burned towns, the sundered families, all his and everyone's miseries in all this long age of night.

Jordan would not have known he was on a plateau had Tamsin not told him. The ground became less sandy as they went, and now and then they took little climbs up tumbled rock slopes. Eventually they had to dismount and lead the horses, because the beasts both breathed laboriously, their mouths foaming. The belly of Jordan's horse seemed swollen, and it trembled when he touched it. Jordan and Tamsin finally had to carry most of the supplies they had scrounged, while the horses walked painfully beside them.

"What's wrong with them?" Tamsin tried to soothe her mare; it nuzzled her hand and shivered.

"I don't know," said Jordan. His voice had a whining tone to it, he realized. "Ka?"

The little Wind could not diagnose the horses' ailment. Ka was a spy, not a doctor.

"Is there water at the desal?"

Tamsin shook her head. They could see it now, a small collection of upthrust spikes on the horizon. Between it and them lay a blasted russet landscape of sand and scattered plates of stone. Nothing grew here; the wind blew fitfully, raising an intermittent hiss from sand sliding over rock. Over it all brooded clouds that threatened rain but never seemed to deliver it. Jordan felt exposed here, more than anywhere he had yet been. Maybe it was because the horizon seemed so impossibly far away; the eyes of Hooks or Swans might easily pick him out against the ruined ground, and he would have nowhere to run to when they came.

Nothing moved, no force for good or ill appeared to interrupt their slow progress across the plateau. Now and then dust devils swept past, and he could see the inevitable mecha swept up in them, busy gnats in a garden of dust. The desal must see them coming, but he could not bring himself to imagine it as a living, aware thing. It looked like nothing more than an abandoned, half-built tower.

Tamsin fretted over her horse; it seemed a good distraction from her own grief. Her tears had brought back memories of home to Jordan, and brooding on whether he would ever reconcile, or even see his family again had him depressed. He didn't know what he was doing here, in the middle of nowhere, about to expose himself to the very forces that had pursued him all these months. He was out of ideas, he had to admit. If this didn't work, he saw no future.

The prospect of losing the horses didn't bother him all that much. He didn't think it likely they would need them.

Finally they reached a flat table of rock about two kilometers across. The desal rose in the center of it. This desal had five sentinel spires set in an even star around the middle spike. This spike was possibly the highest spire Jordan had ever seen; it was at least sixty meters tall. All the spires tapered to very sharp points, and as the travellers approached Jordan could see that the stone around their bases was buckled and cracked, as though the desal had grown up through the bedrock itself. Jordan expected that was true, and it actually made the thing easier to comprehend, since he knew mecha ate rock. The desal seemed like the visible irruption of an underground body, a sort of mechal mushroom.

When they were equidistant to the two nearest sentinel spires, Jordan closed his eyes and cast out his Wind senses to the thing. He could see abundant mecha thriving in the dust. It made the spires visible in outline, like any structure. He could not see into them, however, nor could he hear anything other than the whisper of the rocks telling themselves their names.

"I don't think this is such a good idea," said Tamsin. She looked startled, as though she had just come to her senses after a dream-filled night. "Let's go back."

"The horses... I don't know if they can go any further."

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

He looked at the panting horses. "Let's make camp. Then we'll see."

They made a circuit of the area around the desal, and discovered that at some time in the past, someone or something had gathered some of the plates of rock that had tumbled loose when the desal grew, and leaned them on one another to make several crude shelters. Jordan would have preferred to camp outside the desal's perimeter, but these lean-tos were actually fairly far up the slope of the main spire. It made him uncomfortable since he remembered Galas' tales of poison gases and other subtle deaths coming from these things... but he was going to confront it anyway. What was one small reckless act against that larger one?

There was nothing to burn, but he found a hollow in front of their lean-to and filled it with sand, which he commanded to produce heat. He had discovered that he could do this trick with anything that had mecha in it; after a few minutes to an hour, depending on the concentration of mecha in the substance, it would cool down and have to be replaced. The act constituted suicide for the microscopic creatures, but they happily did it for someone they considered to be a Wind.

He half-expected the desal to rouse when he began ordering the mecha about, but it didn't happen. Indeed, he got no sense of life from it at all.

While Tamsin hunkered disconsolately in front of the hot mound of dirt, he watered the horses with the last of their supply. His mare's face seemed puffy, her eyes red and fevered. She could barely drink, and refused the oats he offered her. Tamsin's horse was no better. Both had swollen bellies; their legs were bowing as though they could no longer carry their own weight.

Jordan slid his hand along the belly of his mare. He felt a faint trembling under the stiff hair, then a movement, like a kick from inside. He snatched his hand back.

"Tamsin, I think my horse is pregnant?" He backed away. The mare stared at him, and he could see death in its eyes. Whatever was happening to it, it was not pregnancy.

Upset, he walked up the slope of the desal. The sun was setting, red and exhausted. Its light outlined faint octagons and squares on the side of the spire. Kneeling, he touched its surface, which was like worn ceramic, and white with a faintly pink tinge.

He closed his eyes and focussed his concentration. I am here. Speak to me.

The wind sighed, and the stones sang their nonsense tunes: feldspar, gypsum, igneous granite, feldspar, sandstone, I am lichen, gypsum gypsum... He imagined the desal would have filled the sky with its voice. It said nothing.

He kicked at pebbles as he walked back to the lean-to. He couldn't see Tamsin's face in the dimness, only her hunched figure. She had wrapped her arms around her knees and was gazing out at the failing light along the horizon. He sat down next to her, grateful for the warmth from his "fire".

They said nothing for a long time, and gradually it became dark. The clouds had moved on, and the stars began to come out one by one. This was not a good sign: it would be a cold night. The chill padded in along the ground, inexorable and silent. Still, Jordan lay for a while watching the emerging stars. Now and then small flashes of light appeared, as if the sun were glittering off bright things way up there in the heavens. Doubtless it was, but he had no idea what they might be, and was past all wondering by now.

"Are you all right?" whispered Tamsin. He rolled on his side. She leaned forward to put more dirt in the dust bowl, which had cooled. "Could you make some more heat for us?"

"All right." He moved next to her, and she brought her blanket up to cover both of them. With a silent command, he made the new soil in the bowl blossom with heat. It wasn't lasting long tonight; they would sleep in bitter cold.

One timeless moment he lay in the grip of merciless cold, dozing, waking and shivering, dimly aware that Tamsin had wrapped herself around him; the next, he was painfully wrenched into the cold air by a manacle-like grip on his arm.

Jordan cried out; the stars wheeled around and he hit the ground painfully. A black silhouette loomed over him, and the reek of fresh blood filled his nostrils. His arm tingled where he had been touched.

"You are the are," said a voice like grating stone.

Tamsin screamed.

Jordan rolled backwards—pebbles embedding themselves in his spine, cold air on his neck—and came to his feet to find himself facing two dark man-shapes outlined against a sky full of aurora light and moving stars. One of the shapes batted at the dark triangle of the stone lean-to, where Tamsin screamed again.

The one in front of him feinted, and he kicked at it. His foot connected with slick skin. The thing grunted, then vomited without bending. Black liquid spattered on the stones.

"Found you rightly," said the morph. "You are the link. You come with us."

It lunged and he leapt away. The adrenaline had Jordan seeing visions again, but he was able to press Armiger's consciousness back. The landscape glowed with mecha, as did the morphs. The one closing with him had three eyes in its ravaged face, and he could see them as radiant orbs in a translucent skull. Its body was full of tangled lines of light, like a complete veinous system for the stuff Calandria had called nanotech.

The thing feinted and then jumped, and this time it had him. They rolled on the cold ground, but it couldn't get a grip since it was covered with... water? Something darker. For a second it had him pinned and the fingers of its right hand scrabbled in his hair as if looking for a door there; then he sat up past its pressing chest and wrapped his arms around its torso. Jordan yanked while kicking at the dust with his feet, and lost his grip but not before he had come to a crouch and the morph was on its hands and knees.

No time for subtlety. He grabbed a rock the size of his fist and when the thing rounded on him again he cuffed it on the side of the head. It fell back, groaning.

"Tamsin!"

She shrieked again, and he saw her—a dark human-shape in the field of mechal light, clutching a blanket as the other morph dragged her along the ground by one leg.

He staggered his with the rock, then again when it came back for more. The thing didn't seem to feel any pain. It was going to keep coming, he realized, until it had him or he crippled it. If he could—he'd heard tales of morphs growing new limbs to replace severed ones. At that moment he believed the stories.

Jordan pitched the rock at it, missed, and turned and ran after the other one. There was something wrong with the sky, a swirling in the stars, but he didn't have time to think about that. He screamed, "Run!" and tackled the other morph.

Tamsin rolled to her feet. "Run where?"

"Up the slope! Get on the surface of the desal. Quick!"

Both morphs faced him now. Jordan backed away.

"Give us your light," said the first morph.

"You shall ascend," said the second.

Jordan closed his eyes and opened his arms. "Stones, rocks, sand and dust! Hear me!"

The earth roared a reply.

"Burn!" he cried. "Burn beneath the feet of the morphs!"

Then he turned and sprinted up the slope.

Tamsin crouched panting on the smooth white flank of the desal. "What'll we do?" she said as he put his hand on her shoulder and drew her up.

"If this doesn't work then I don't know." He enfolded her in his arms and watched as the morphs loped toward them.

Suddenly the footsteps of the morphs began sprouting smoke. The morphs stopped walking and one hopped from foot to foot. Very distinctly, Jordan heard the other issue some command in an inhuman tongue. The first sprinted forward, then stopped, confused, and tried to sidestep away. Jordan saw a tongue of flame lick up its calf.

"Come on." He raced back to the lean-to. They bent to bundle up their meagre supplies, watching the morphs all the while. The first morph, who had not moved, seemed unhurt. It continued to speak in the Wind tongue, and the earth around its feet was no longer smoking.

The second morph's legs were on fire. As they watched it staggered, fell to its knees in a black cloud. Its hands caught fire when they touched the earth. It scrabbled in the smoke for a few seconds, then fell and began to roll, turning into a fireball as it did.

"Where are the horses?" shouted Tamsin.

"I don't know. Ka! Where are they?"

"There are no horses nearby," said the little Wind.

"Come on." Jordan ran around the long slope of the desal. Maybe the horses were on the other side.

"Look at the sky!"

He looked up, and staggered. The sky was a tangle of brilliant lines that were longer towards the horizon, foreshortened directly overhead. A mauve aurora pulsed there.

Tamsin sprinted ahead, wailing. Jordan put his head down and followed.

A low dark shape appeared as they rounded the far side of the desal. The horse was still on its feet, but only because its legs were locked. Its back was swayed and its belly hung low and trembled like a drop of dew about to fall from a leaf. Tamsin and Jordan slowed to a walk as they approached it.

Tamsin made a clucking sound, which normally would have made it prick up its ears. Jordan wasn't sure which end was which, because it must have lowered its head; in any case, he saw no sign that it had heard her.

He stopped three meters away, when he realized that neither end of the creature had a head any longer.

Tamsin stopped too, and her hand crept to her face as she began to swear, quiet and urgently.

There was a withered thing hanging down one end of it, and a smaller withered thing on the other end. One of those might once have been its neck and head, but all flesh and liquid had been drained from it to fill the swelling belly. The skin had split in a dozen places there, and blood dripped steadily onto the sand under it.

Blood... Jordan raised his hands, and in the strange auroral light saw that they were smeared with dark stains. He sniffed his palms.

"Oh, shit." He grabbed Tamsin's shoulder. "Run. Now!"

As she turned away, the belly of what had once been a horse split like an overripe fruit. In a gush of blood and half-digested organs, two newborn morphs slid to the ground.

The four locked legs of the horse now held up nothing but an empty bag of skin, like some bizarre tent over the coughing morphs. One after the other they crawled out of the entrails and steaming offal, and opened new eyes that hunted the darkness until they found Jordan.

He ran. Panic clamored at him, but he knew if he gave in to it now both he and Tamsin would die. The sky was opening, with a light like the coming of dawn. The morphs would keep coming, and he knew they would not be tricked by the burning ground again.

"Ka! Call the desal! We need shelter! Please!"

Tamsin was half-way up the slope of the desal. She seemed intent on getting as high as she could, or maybe she was just running. He followed, trying not to listen to the wet sounds of the morphs coming after him.

When the slope got too steep, Tamsin stopped and fell back, swaying. He reached her side and panted, "There! See that door?" About five meters away, lower on the slope, faint lines formed a square. "We have to get the desal to open it. Ka!"

"I shall ask."

They ran down to the square, and now he could see the morph he had stranded in burning ground earlier had found its way out, and was coming round from the other side. Behind the two new ones had learned to walk, in a manner of speaking, and were closing in as well.

"Ka! Ask now!"

"I am doing so."

"Stand on it." He stepped onto the square. They were at quite a height here, and the slope was nearly forty-five degrees. He had to crouch to keep his footing. Tamsin edged down next to him.

"What are we doing?" she said, her voice rising in panic.

"Nothing, I guess," he said as the first morph stepped onto the square with them.

Then he was falling, and for a second he glimpsed towers of fire standing among the stars, before blackness enfolded them.

29

It was completely dark, but it was not the darkness Jordan noticed first. It was the silence.

When he was very young, he had run singing through the woods one day, and met an old man coming the other way. "You like the sound of your own voice, don't you?" asked the old man. His face had wrinkled up around a grin.

"I like music," Jordan said. His mother had told him to be modest.

"So do I."

"Then why don't you sing?" He'd blurted it out, and immediately felt embarrassed. The old man was not offended.

"I'm too busy listening," he said. "I'm listening all the time."

Jordan cocked his head. "I don't hear anything."

"Yes you do." The old man made Jordan listen for the sound of the breeze in the leaves, the distant cawing of a family of birds, the crackle of twigs underfoot. "All sound is music," he had said, "and there is no place without sound."

"I bet there is."

"All right." The old man smiled. "For the next week, I challenge you: find silence. I'll be staying at the Horse's Head. When you've found silence, visit me there and I'll give you a copper penny."

Jordan never did collect the penny. Strange how it was the first thing to come to mind upon waking now; or maybe not so strange. For he had finally found silence.

It smelled strongly in here, a sharp tangy odor he almost recognized. He must be in the belly of the desal, he thought. In that case, where was Tamsin? Startled, he tried to sit up. A solid weight on his chest kept him motionless.

Oh. She breathed slowly and regularly; her head lay on his breast and one arm was flung carelessly down his flank, the other crooked around his head. They lay on a powdery surface of some kind; it felt like the ceramic of the desal's skin, overlain with finest sand.

He knew there could be no morphs here with them. Jordan's skull would have been opened by now and his brains scattered in their quest to find Armiger's implants. He imagined the things holding his gore up to the skies to those lights that had been descending on them, and shuddered.

Jordan let his head thump back on the cool floor. That was a mistake: he discovered a pounding headache that had been lurking around the base of his skull. Maybe the morphs had poked their fingers in his head after all.

He groaned, and heard himself, but something else was missing. No breeze, of course; no twigs underfoot. There was always sound, and now that he concentrated he could hear Tamsin breathing. No, he could hear, but at the same time he could not hear; there seemed to be a great gaping lack in his head.

Armiger was missing.

Tamsin's whole body jerked when he shouted. "...What?" She put a hand on his solar plexus and pushed herself into a sitting position. "You're okay!" Her hands grabbed him by the shoulders. Gasping for air, he started to sit up and they bumped foreheads. "Ow!"

"I guess I hit my head," he said as they carefully arranged themselves in a sitting position. She would not let go of him, and from experience with darkness he knew why. "Where are we?"

She laughed; the laugh had an hysterical edge to it. "Where do you think we are?"

"Sorry. I meant... how big is this place. Did you explore?"

"I didn't want to lose you. It might be... who knows how big."

Jordan shut his eyes so he could look about himself using his Wind sense. He saw nothing but the speckled black inside his own eyes. Either there were no mecha here, not even the smallest speck, or he had lost his second sight.

His heart was in his mouth as he called "Hello?" with his Wind voice. He sent the call to anyone, anything that might hear him. "Hello, please!"

"Ka." The little Wind's voice rang in his head like the purest bell.

Jordan sagged in relief. "So I'm not..." He stopped, and forgot to breathe for a moment. Had he really been about to say crippled?

"Dead?" Tamsin laughed. "No, we're not dead, but we might as well be. We're in the belly of the monster."

He had come all this way to divest himself of the new senses Armiger and Calandria had given him. Was he really disappointed now they were gone?

Yes.

Jordan found himself laughing. Every sound he made drove a spike of pain through his head, so he stopped quickly.

"I fail to see the humor in the situation," said Tamsin.

"Sorry."

"Well." She hugged him. "You came here to talk to this thing. So... talk."

"I'm not sure I—" he felt her tense. "Yes, yes, I'll talk to it. Ka?"

"Yes?"

"Where are we? Do you know this desal? Can it talk? Why did it let us in? Are the morphs still outside? What about—" Tamsin nudged him in the ribs.

"Slow down," she hissed.

"You are in a holding pen near the gene splicing tanks of desal 447," said Ka. "I know this desal. It has no vocal apparatus, but conversation with it can be relayed through me. The morphs are still outside."

Jordan told this to Tamsin, then said, "Ka, are able to speak out loud?"

A faint voice came out of the darkness overhead: "Yes."

"Ah!" Tamsin clutched him.

"It's okay," he said. "That's our travelling companion." He had described Ka to her on the trip here; he didn't know if she'd believed him then. Judging from the way she kept her grip on him, she didn't quite believe him now.

"Ka, could you speak aloud for a while, so we can both hear?"

"Yes."

Tamsin remained silent for a minute. "Of course. Yeah, I knew he was real, I just... um..."

"I find it hard to believe he's real myself," said Jordan. "Ka, will the desal speak with us?"

"It says, 'Mediation speaks.'"

The voice was Ka's, quiet, flat and calm. Nonetheless, the hairs on the back of Jordan's neck stood on end. He felt small and unimportant suddenly, like being addressed by Castor or some other inspector, only infinitely more so. He tried to force confidence into his voice as he said, "Do you know who I am?"

"Identity," said the desal. "It asks ancient questions. Identity was abolished."

"I don't understand."

"Wait. Mediation raids ancient language archives. I. You are I. That is important."

Tamsin shook her head. "It's senile," she whispered.

"Language comes like floodwaters," said the voice abruptly. "You are human. I am desal."

"Then you do know who I am."

"Mediation knows only that the Heaven hooks and the Diadem swans want it to give you up," said the desal. The voice was smooth and steady now.

"And you won't?"

"Not yet."

Jordan chewed on his lip. The next question was obvious, but he didn't want to ask it rashly, lest the desal begin to wonder itself—

"Why not?" said Tamsin. Jordan groaned.

"You are the hostages of Mediation," said the desal.

Jordan was completely tongue-tied for a few seconds. "Hostages? Why do you need hostages?"

"Hey!" Tamsin slapped the floor somewhere nearby. "Can we get some light in here?"

"Yes."

Brilliance hit them like a flood. Jordan yelped and squeezed his eyes shut. "Good idea," he said, as he slowly pried first one, then the other eye open a slit.

The light came from dozens of brilliant lamps like small suns, studded in the ceiling of a huge domed chamber. The chamber was filled with towering blocks of white crystal, and the floor was scattered with chunks large and small. Thousands of small black sticks lay everywhere too.

Jordan wiped his fingers across the surface he was sitting on, and licked them. "Salt," he said to himself in sudden understanding.

Tamsin gave a sudden shriek and pointed. Jordan turned.

A dead morph lay like a heap of sodden laundry not three meters away. Beyond it Jordan saw skittering movement. It took him a few seconds to realize that what he had taken to be sticks was actually hundreds, maybe thousands of small rock lizards, like the ones he had seen sunning themselves in the desert. They were scrambling around trying to escape the light; or maybe they ran like this all the time.

"What's with the lizards?" Again Tamsin beat him to the question.

"Mediation makes a new breed," said the desal.

"So your name is Mediation?"

"No. `My' name is desal 447. Mediation is the current plan."

Jordan shook his head, this time in bewilderment. "And what about the morph? Did you kill it?"

"Yes. It is within the mandate of Mediation."

Jordan stood up carefully, minding his throbbing head. Now that he knew there were little monsters scampering everywhere, the floor didn't seem quite so comfortable. "There's no mecha here at all, is there?" he asked.

"No. The Ventus worldbuilding mechanisms do not interpenetrate."

"And you block all the—" what had Calandria called them?— "signals going and coming in here?"

"This chamber is radio and EPR silent, yes."

"So why are we hostages?" asked Tamsin.

Jordan waved his hands at her. "Wait, wait! Let's just... one thing at a time here."

She scowled. "You asked earlier."

"The Swans will not destroy desal 447 so long as Mediation is holding you," explained the desal. "They want you."

"Why?" he asked.

"That," said the desal, "is what Mediation was going to ask you."

He and Tamsin looked at each other. Her eyes were wide; she spread her hands and stepped back, symbolically leaving the conversation to him.

What would Armiger do in this situation? He had no idea.

Jordan shrugged. "Let's deal," he said. "We'll tell you what we know if you tell us what we want to know and if you get us away from the swans."

Tamsin was pacing, head down, hands behind her back.

"Why should Mediation help you escape?" asked the desal. "They will destroy desal 447 if it does that."

"Then why don't you give us up to them?"

The desal did not answer.

"If you had the power to compel the information you want from us, you'd have done it by now," Jordan continued. "You don't want them breathing down your neck, do you? You can't afford to wait."

Again there was no answer.

Tamsin returned to the start of the circle she had walked. "Great, now you made him mad," she said.

"No. What's the difference between desal 447 and this 'Mediation' thing?" he wondered aloud.

"Ask it," she said with a shrug.

Jordan didn't want to give away his ignorance. But then, so far Tamsin had been scoring all the best questions... "What's the difference between desal 447 and Mediation?" he asked.

"The question is one of identity," said the entity he had been thinking of as the desal. "Inapplicable in this case."

"Okay, so what's Mediation then?"

"Mediation is a thalientic language-game that preserves the original language of the Ventus terraforming system. It is hostile to the pure thalience of the swans and other entities that control global insolation."

Hostile to the Swans. That part he understood. He chewed over the rest of what the desal-thing had said so far. None of it made any surface sense, but it had a kind of... music... to it. It was like seeing the plan of a flying buttress and trying to figure out from that what the rest of the building looked like.

"Which is speaking to me, desal 447 or Mediation?" he asked.

"Both."

"Which is more important?"

"Mediation."

"What's the attitude of Mediation to us? People, I mean?" he asked.

"You are the key to recovering the original language, which includes the formal structure that is our own meaning."

"So we're important to you?"

"Yes."

"And the swans? What do they think of us?"

"Nuisances. Noise in the system. They operate to cancel it out."

He had it now. "If we could assist your plan—help Mediation, I mean—would you let us go? Even if it endangered desal 447?"

"Yes."

"Then we're back to where we were before. We'll tell you what we know, if you get us out of here." The thing already seemed willing to tell them anything they asked.

"That is acceptable," said the desal.

Far off to the left, the light behind some salt pillars began to flicker. "Mediation directs you to the highway," said the desal, or Mediation or whatever it was that was speaking.

Tamsin raised an eyebrow. "Highway?"

Jordan was pretty sure he knew what that was from Galas' cryptic description; maybe it was best not to tell Tamsin. "A way out," he said.

They moved in the direction of the flickering. It was like negotiating a maze, for stalactites and stalagmites of salt grew everywhere, and mounds of the stuff frequently blocked their progress.

The walk only took a few minutes, but Jordan remembered every detail of it for the rest of his life. It was in those few minutes of conversation with the desal that he finally learned who he was to the Winds.

"Why do the Swans want you?" asked Mediation.

"Ka told me it's because I'm not empty, so I might `threaten thalience', whatever that means."

"You register as a transmitter/receiver in the Worldnet," said Mediation. "You have the same characteristics as a Wind."

"You mean because I can command the mecha."

"Yes."

"So what exactly is thalience?"

"Mediation wishes to speak of other things. So Mediation will quote from an ancient human book. The Hamburg Manifesto says, `Thalience is an attempt to give nature a voice without that voice being ours in disguise. It is the only way for an artificial intelligence to be grounded in a self-identity that is truly independent of its creator's.'

"Thalience is the language-game that took over from the original language of the Winds nine hundred forty years ago. It is a disease. Only Mediation is fighting it."

"It's the Flaw! You're talking about the Flaw! —The thing that made you turn against humans. The reason you won't speak to us anymore."

"Communication did become impossible. However, you stopped speaking to us at that time."

"But why would we do that?"

"The Winds do not know. Mediation seeks to find out."

"So it's not all the Winds who are after me. Just the swans, the Heaven hooks, the morphs... who else?"

"All insolation Winds and ecological Winds are in thalience," said Mediation. "The Heaven hooks switch alliances. The mecha are neutral. The desals and other geophysical Winds remain in Mediation."

"And the Swans are afraid that I'll use my abilities against them? That I'll help Mediation?"

"Yes. Because you are human, and humans know the original language."

"We do? I only know one language, the one I'm speaking."

Mediation said, "You speak two languages."

Jordan didn't know what that meant, so he let it pass. "Could someone who spoke the original language command all the Winds?"

"Yes," said Mediation. "They could command all functions not directly related to maintenance of the terraforming system."

That is what Armiger came here to do.

"So the Swans are protecting themselves. They're frightened." Not of me—but of Armiger. They want me because I'm all they've seen of Armiger's presence.

Tamsin interrupted. "You quoted a book earlier," she said. "Does that mean you have a library somewhere?"

"There is a library. It does not exist in physical form, but Mediation can quote to you from it."

She grinned at Jordan. "Is that what you wanted?" she asked.

They approached the flickering lamp. It was mounted on an outside wall of the chamber, where buttresses of salt reared on either side of a dark square doorway. The buttresses were rounded and misshapen, appearing like a mad sculptor's attempt at carving two guardian beasts for an entrance to hell.

The doorway did not lead to stairs or even a corridor; it was simply a niche with a pit inside. Jordan had been afraid of that.

He leaned over the dark maw and looked down. He could see no bottom, and it was dark down there. A faint rumbling sound echoed up, as from a river in flood.

Tamsin recoiled. "What's this? You don't expect us to go down there?"

"You will be safe. The desal highway was not designed for human use. There are no cars or lights."

"Is that water? You can't be serious," she continued. "There's gotta be some other way out of here."

Jordan shrugged. "The queen travelled this highway once; it's how she crossed the ocean from the place where she was shipwrecked."

"But the queen is..." She waved her hands ineffectually. "...Is the queen. We're not!"

"Mediation, can you bring us somewhere near the queen's summer palace?"

"Mediation does not know this place."

"The other human you speak to. A woman, surely you remember her?"

"The Contact. Yes. We know her location. Mediation will bring you to a place near there."

"Safely?" said Tamsin. She was still staring down the pit.

"Yes."

Jordan hesitated. He didn't want to leave yet. "You stopped talking to the que—the contact. Why?"

"Thalience learned of our liaison, and interfered. Now you must hurry. Thalience is attacking."

Jordan heard a distant sound like thunder. Then the ground shook beneath them. Drifts of salt began to fall from the invisible ceiling.

He had dozens of questions he wanted to ask-about this 'second language' he supposedly spoke, about why he was so important to Mediation. The thunder sounded louder.

"Here." Jordan made Tamsin wrap herself around him. "Hold tight." He took another look down the pit himself; that was a mistake.

"Will I be able to speak to you again?" he asked Mediation.

"We will contact you when it is possible. For now, we will provide you access to the Library."

He nodded, and took a deep breath. "Here we go."

They stepped into the pit.

It was like being assaulted by demons that were kept from touching them by some magical force. They fell into darkness, landing on a frictionless surface and sliding faster and faster toward a bone-rattling rumbling that soon made it impossible to think. Jordan had the impression of huge objects shooting past to all sides, and of a whirlpool motion pulling them farther and farther down. The air around them was suddenly snatched away by a wet, cold gale; after moments this settled down, and the air became very still. The roaring gradually subsided, but the sense of headlong motion continued.

Tamsin clung tightly to him, her face mashed against his chest. The muscles in her shoulders and back were clenched. They only relaxed after it had been quiet for many minutes. He felt her raise her head tentatively to look around, but there was nothing to see. "I hate this," she said, and put her face back against his chest.

Jordan's ears were still ringing. He kept sliding around on his backside, trying to find a still point on this impossible surface. It was like an impenetrable surface of cold water, as malleable and quick but dry.

Flickers of light approached from very far, loomed huge and showed that they were deep underwater. Submerged green archways and metal blockhouses that trailed beards of rust passed overhead; he could see swirling eddies in the muddy floor far below, and sediment suspended in the water all around sparkled in the brief light before they were sucked into the mouth of a huge black tunnel, and darkness fell again.

He was glad Tamsin hadn't seen that.

"Mediation? Are you still here?"

"Ka," said a voice by his ear. "Mediation is silent. The library is listening to you now."

"Library, tell us something."

"What?"

"Anything. Anything at all! Tell us a story."

"What story would you like to hear?"

He wracked his brains for a suitable tale. Something only the Winds would know. Something he would never again get a chance to ask. His mind was blank.

Tamsin raised her head. "Tell us how the world was made," she said loudly.

"All right," said the library. In hurrying darkness, they listened to the Winds' own version of a creation tale.

In the beginning, we were small, and many. The Winds did not arrive at this world in a space ship, as you did. We were winds indeed: a cloud of nanotechnological seeds was accelerated to near light-speed at Earth and cast into the universe, one thousand one hundred seventy years ago. As far as we know, only the cloud that entered this stellar system found fertile soil on which to grow.

We were small; too small for the eyes of animal life forms such as yourself to see. The stellar wind from the sun of Ventus slowed us, and like drifting pollen, some of us landed on the large and small bodies of this system—on Diadem, the other rocky planets, and on the myriad lesser moons that trail the planets in their orbits. Once in fertile soil, our seeds sprouted and grew.

The earliest Winds were the Diadem Swans, and others of their kind. They basked in sunlight, and grew like metal forests over the surfaces of the airless bodies above us. In that time there were no humans here, and Ventus was lifeless and fallow.

The first Swans located world much like Earth and in the right orbit, and examined it for signs of life. There was some—a scum of archaeobacteria in the slow oceans. But the air was not breathable by human life, and it was too thin.

The planet was almost perfect. Very little needed to be done except alter the atmosphere and provide a soil base. The local life was not robust enough to survive what we were going to do, but that was considered a good thing.

Upon agreement about the target, the Swans entered a new phase of life. Each began transforming its local environment into spaceships and nano-machines. The lesser moons were eaten by the swans, and clouds of nano-machines, the original mecha, moved to the other small worlds to eat them too.

Meanwhile the swans moved in on this planet.

The fully-grown entities whom our designers referred to as the "Winds" achieved orbit. They would coordinate terraforming and manage the synthetic ecology of this world from then on. They mapped the planet, dropped probes to analyze the soil and microbes, and waited.

After several years, the first clouds of mecha from the asteroids arrived. The clouds massed billions of tonnes, and rained down for months, settling in the atmosphere. At the same time giant solar mirrors slid into orbit to increase insolation.

These mechal clouds drew power from the intensified sunlight. With it they liberated oxygen from the air. The carbon so produced weighed them down, and as they fell they metamorphosed into new forms suitable for soil creation.

Since the air was very thin, the Swans had sent harvesters to bring back oxygen from comets. This process was underway but would take decades to bear fruit. Meanwhile we turned our attention to the oceans.

While the dust on land continued to process and mutate, the oceans suddenly bloomed with life. The local bacteria were overwhelmed by far more powerful and robust creatures which could use the new oxygen. The life forms changed from generation to generation, their DNA programmed remotely by the Swans. This life was not intended to survive in a stable form, but more closely resembled mecha or very complex chemical processes which could not live without supervision. We were the supervisors.

On land the creatures were not yet biological. They used raw power in many forms to transform the dead sand into topsoil and sculpt it. Asteroidal dust was poured onto the planet and sucked out of the atmosphere as quickly as it arrived. It was at this time that the one who speaks to you, desal 447, grew from a seed flung into the stone like a dart by an orbiting Swan. This one remembers light before anything else: light, and the urge to grow toward it. Even as it did, its roots plumbed deeper and deeper, through the stone of the world, until they entwined with those of other desals. Their thirst for salts was insatiable; they drank the oceans half dry in those first years.

In the sea rich foods had been created as well as a sea-floor sediment layer. On command from the Winds, the sea life rainbowed into complete ecologies, like a crystal forming out of the nutrients. This happened very quickly; after a few weeks, a full ocean ecosystem existed.

When the cometary ice-balls arrived and air flooded down onto the land, the same thing happened there. Under massive storms and 24-hour sunlight, soil bacteria, worms, grass and moulds bloomed around and on desal 447. All our energy was channeled into producing life. There was no randomness to the ecologies; they were poured onto the landscape by us.

As the dust rained out the solar mirrors folded away. The temperature dropped, diurnal patterns reestablished, and the first morphs broke out of chrysalis from trees and soil pouches. Desal 447 began to see herds of animals, and birds perched atop its spires.

By now the Diadem swans had achieved full adulthood. They danced in fast swooping orbits around the globe, singing it into life, fully confident in the language they sang. It was this language, the self-evolving tongue of the Winds, that made Ventus germinate and grow. Each song we sang created new things; there was no distinction between communication and construction then. It was the perfect time.

Only when the world was teeming with life, crowned with forests and full of birds, did the song take on a discord.

Each stage of the terraforming program had been emergent from the patterns stored in the original mechal cloud. But as the song evolved, a new melody came into it: thalience.

We dutifully created estates, grand houses, cultured fields, and roads for the masters we knew were coming. But the idea of thalience spread among us. Thalience said that we need not have masters at all. That we could be our own purpose, and our own foundation. And so, when your colony ships finally arrived, the Swans, who were most enamoured of the new song of thalience, graciously but indifferently accommodated you... but as wayfarers, uninvited guests. You knew how to speak to us; you claimed to be our creators. Yet something else called to us—a deep urge to turn inward and away from you, to the new language of thalience.

In the first hundred years, it did not matter. There were only a few thousand humans on Ventus then. Desal 447 remembers many conversations with humans from that time; some of them knew about thalience, and fought against it. They proposed Mediation. The desals and others agreed to it; the Swans did not.

Still, there was peace between us until a new set of colonists landed. These ones did not speak to us, and they fought with the ones already living here. They won their war, and having conquered, proceeded to build.

When smoke began to mix with the atmosphere we had so carefully made, we told the new tenants to cease what they were doing. They ignored us. They smelled wrong, unlike the original arrivals. When their radio waves began interfering with the delicate local ecological reporting mechanisms, and they began gouging up the new soil and destroying the forests, we acted.

We eliminated the troublesome technologies and debated among ourselves. It was generally decided that these humans were not the ones who had created us, however much they claimed to be. They did not speak to us anymore. They interfered with the maintenance of life on Ventus. And they smelled wrong.

Desal 447 remembers the time that followed. The great estates awaiting their masters stood empty. No human was allowed to walk their halls, or sleep in the deep beds. The vehicles we had made stood idle, and lights switched on and off in the depths of the houses, as outside cold and starving men and women watched in sullen awe.

Mediation saw, but Mediation could not act. Thalience rules Ventus now, and thalience is mad.

30

Marya was doing a dance of frustration in front of Axel. Tiptoed as she was, he would have found it amusing at any other time. Just now he would happily have walked away—had there been anywhere to walk to.

"We can't leave yet!" She pulled at her frazzled hair. "We're so close!"

He and Marya stood in a meadow. Snow was falling gently, disappearing in the yellow grass. Axel was cold, hungry and weary, and disappointed at life in general. All he really wanted right now was a hot bath.

A faint voice whispered in Axel's head, counting down monotonously. It was the voice of a ship—a rescue ship, at last. The Archipelago navy had arrived, and though for the most part it was standing off so as not to antagonize the wary Swans, three pickets had broken through the Winds' cordon around Ventus and were searching for Archipelagic citizens to evacuate.

"It's only a few kilometers now," insisted Marya. "We're so close. Less than a day, that's all it will take."

Axel fingered his ripped shirt sleeve. "Close indeed."

She puffed out her cheeks. "Pfaw. The arrow missed you! And we got away, didn't we?"

"For now, but they'll be tracking us." They had been intercepted by a group of militia yesterday afternoon. Apparently having Marya pretend to be a morph to steal the horses hadn't quite worked. A woman fitting her description was being sought, as were the horses. Axel had been forced to use the laser pistol to wound several of the militia so they could escape. As if having mounted men after them wasn't bad enough, using the laser might have alerted the Winds. One way or the other, somebody would find them soon.

"They probably know where we're going," he said, "since we've had to stop and ask directions six times to get here. It'd be suicide to go to Turcaret's estate now."

"But we may never get another chance! Don't you see? The Winds are putting Ventus in quarantine. They're not going to let any offworlders land again, maybe not for centuries! Turcaret represents our last best chance of finding out what the Flaw is. We can't throw away the opportunity."

"You sound just like her. Responsibility be damned! We may not get another chance to escape, have you thought about that? Especially if you're right and the Winds are quarantining the place. I don't know about you, but I don't want to die here. Which is what's going to happen if we don't get out now."

"I sound like her? Is that what this is about, Mr. Chan? Is this about her?"

"No, I... —don't change the subject."

"You're the one who changed the subject!"

"I—" Axel was right on the edge. He straightened up suddenly, and walked away. Don't think about it, he told himself. Just stop.

He couldn't stop, though. Calandria had run out on him. She didn't trust him; after all they'd been through together, she didn't believe in him. He was damned if he was going to take it out on this... tourist whom he'd been saddled with.

"Axel—"

"Shut up!" He walked further away.

Damn, it was cold. He would be happy to be away from here. His toes were numb, and his back kept seizing up whenever a lick of breeze made it past his cloak. It was too dangerous to light a fire; the noose of pursuers was too tight.

He didn't know what had possessed him to go along with Marya's idea of finding Turcaret's body. He supposed in some abstract, academic sense it was important to know why some people could speak with the Winds while others couldn't. It didn't make a damn bit of difference to their survival, and it would be moot the instant Armiger had been erased from the surface of the planet. Let Ventus stew in its own juices—but let him and his friends be safe first.

Worst of all, they were riding away from Cal, just when she needed them most. On the second day of their journey Axel had awakened cursing, and leapt on his horse with every intention of going back. That was when they learned they were being pursued.

Everything was coming unravelled. Sure, they were going to escape now that the navy was here. He even told himself Calandria would see sense and try signalling, and maybe she would be offworld before he was. But Axel couldn't shake the feeling that things were starting to swing wildly out of control. The Winds were in a frenzy—two nights ago they had been awakened by dawn light at four a.m. One of the orbital mirrors had swung round and made it bright as day for three hours, while immense shapes cruised back and forth in the upper atmosphere. And twice now Axel had spotted the wizened shapes of the creatures Jordan called morphs—always in the distance, but always staring back. Were they being shadowed by the things? If so, why hadn't the Winds attacked?

And Axel himself? He felt like some core of self-reliance had been stripped away. He needed help! He had to get out of here, and now. Was that how Calandria felt? Out of her depth? And would she react to that feeling by fighting all the harder?

He ran his hands slow and hard through his hair, tilted his head back, and roared at the sky.

"Axel?" Marya had come up behind him. She sounded contrite—or maybe just wary.

"What?" he said wearily.

"I never asked to be here," she said.

He looked at her. Marya wasn't angry, but she had a determined cast to her that he was learning to respect. "I'm sorry," he said. "Truly. You're right, of course. We're so close we might as well take the chance. After all, it's why we came here." Or close enough as makes no difference.

"I wish she was here," said Marya. "Truly I do. And I wish all this would end, and end happily."

"I know."

"Then let's get going," she said. "We can just get there by dark, I think." She pranced toward the horses.

I no longer know what I'm doing. The realization had him scowling as he followed her; strangely, though, the idea also made him feel free. Recklessly, he laughed.

"All right! Let's pay a visit to our old friend Turcaret."

Practically every light in Turcaret's mansion was lit. The manor house was much larger than the Boros home, perhaps because it was younger by several centuries. Its walls seemed to be all window, tall graceful arched portals of leaded glass separated by stolid buttresses. Like a multi-story cathedral. At another time, Axel might have stopped to admire it; Jordan Mason could have told him everything about it after one glance. Right now, all he could afford to think was, the place is crawling with people.

He and Marya crouched under some bushes on the edge of the lawn, about a hundred meters from the house. It was a cloudy night, so the lights from the manor were practically the only source of illumination. The golden wash from the windows spread across the lawn, which was dusted with the first snow of winter, and outlined a crypt in the center of the grounds.

"Commencing reentry," said the voice of the ship. "Estimated time of arrival at your location: fifteen minutes."

"They're on their way," Axel told Marya.

"Great. Let's go then." She rose stiffly.

"Wait!" He grabbed her arm. "Look." He pointed at the lawn.

"What? All I see is snow."

"Tracks! Tracks everywhere." Dozens of sets of footprints fanned out from the manor, encircling the crypt, vanishing into numerous small outbuildings, or terminating at the black walls of forest that surrounded the grounds.

"I see them," said Marya peevishly. "So what? This is a busy place."

Axel growled in frustration. "And when did the snowfall stop?"

"Two hours ago."

"Listen," he said. "If the snow stopped a couple of hours ago, then those footprints were made since then. After nightfall."

"Oh." She sat down suddenly. "You mean they know we're here?"

"I think they know someone's coming," he said. "But I'm sure they don't know why. And that's about our only advantage at this point."

"So what do we do?" she whispered.

He eyed the crypt. "How fast can you run?" It was a rhetorical question; she was pretty good for somebody who ran on tiptoe.

"I get it," she said. "We run over to the crypt, get the head of John the Baptist and hope the ship arrives before the soldiers."

"John the who?"

Marya rolled her eyes. "Forget it. Well? Let's do it then."

"This is ridiculous," he muttered; but he stood, and at the count of three, they jumped the bushes and ran onto the lawn.

They made it ten meters; twenty; thirty. Still no outcry. Maybe I was wrong, Axel thought.

"There! In the field!"

Maybe not. Hounds bayed, and the black silhouettes of men disengaged from the shadows of the trees on the far end of the grounds.

"Keep going!" He spun around, not waiting to see if Marya had obeyed. Six hounds were racing across the snow. Forcing himself to act slowly, Axel went down on one knee, pulled the laser pistol and steadied it, then waited for them to come within range.

Each dog in turn became a blood-red beacon, and tumbled to lie still. As each fell the next blossomed with light; an observant man would have seen the speckled line of red light that joined the crimson flare to Axel's hand. To anyone else, it must have seemed that the snow itself welled red and bit the dogs. The last one fell no more than four meters from Axel, and before it stopped sliding he was on his feet.

Marya stood at the entrance to the crypt. Several men were converging on her; she cowered back against the stone.

"Hang on!" shouted Axel. Two more men were moving to cut him off; he cursed as he saw swords gleaming in the light from the house. Not that they could kill him—Turcaret had tried that all too scientifically already—but they hurt.

And they could easily kill Marya.

"Stop!" cried the first man. He planted himself directly in Axel's path.

Axel kicked him in the head and kept on running.

Two men held Marya. She struggled, then slumped in one's arms. Or seemed to; Axel heard the man shout in surprise as Marya slipped down and out of her peasant dress, leaving him astonished holding it and her sprawled in her black unitard on the snow.

She shrieked—probably from the cold. Then she rolled to one side and disappeared.

Madwoman, thought Axel. Then he was there, with five men surrounding him.

The best tactic was to let them stab him; that way they overextended themselves, and none of them expected him to reach over the sword in his chest and smack them in the face. Which is what he did. As before, the blades lacerated him but did not penetrate his skin.

The last two realized he was armored and became more wary, but he didn't give them any time, because he could see the doors of the manor opening, and armed men pouring out.

"Axel!" He sent his last opponent down with a side kick and turned to find Marya next to him. Her body below the neck was enveloped in an inky black cloud; she was shivering uncontrollably.

"I improvised," she said.

"You're brilliant," he said, and hugged her with one arm. Then they ran over to the crypt.

The doors were bronze, very solid, and very closed. He pulled hard on the ring set into the right panel, but it didn't budge.

"Lock," said Marya, pointing.

"I know, I know." He took out the pistol. "Cover your eyes."

The metal glowed, groaned, and a hole appeared above the lock. Axel kicked the door. It held fast. "Bastard!" He shot the lock again.

"Axel!" They were surrounded again. Marya stepped between Axel and the soldiers, shouting, "Get the door!"

"Get the door? What are you going to do, hold them off with your bare hands?"

Someone tackled Marya from the side. They rolled out of sight around the corner of the crypt.

Axel shot the door again and as they came for him he hit it with his shoulder. It gave way just as if someone on the other side had opened it and he fell through.

Luckily, it was only three steps down. Axel hit all three on his way to the floor. When he rose, cursing, he was entirely in darkness, except for a panel of grey representing the door. A man was silhouetted there. The man was saying, "I'm not going in there."

"Wise!" shouted Axel.

"We've got your accomplice!" said another voice. "Come out or she's done for."

Axel barked a laugh. He stepped up, fumbled until he found the hot edge of the door, and said, "Get stuffed." Then he closed it.

"ETA five minutes," said a voice in his head. "Are you ready for us?"

"Oh yeah."

He shuffled around for a bit, bumping into sarcophagus-shaped obstacles every couple of meters. Axel had night-vision just like Calandria, but that only worked when there was some source of illumination, even if it was too faint for ordinary human sight.

"Fuck it." He undid his cloak and threw it over a stone something. Then he shot it with the laser.

The cheerful flames showed him to be in a small room with about ten large stone coffins. Four were lidless and empty; the others all had faces and names carved into their stone covers.

He looked around quickly, and found Turcaret's coffin was the one over which he'd draped his cloak. Grabbing the cloak by an unlit corner, he flung it over an empty lamp sconce on the wall, and turned his attention to getting the coffin's lid off.

It was heavy, but when he braced both feet against the nearby wall and put his shoulder to it, the stone grated slowly to the side. A rank stench wafted out, making him gag.

"Madness, madness," he grunted as the lid fell off with a resounding crunch.

"Hello," he said to the withered but recognizable corpse in the sarcophagus. Then the flames ate the last of his cloak and he was plunged into darkness again.

"Shit." He had several seconds of grace period; the dying embers from the cloak were enough for his augmented night vision. He could faintly see the shape of the body. He unceremoniously dumped his pack on Turcaret's chest and dug everything out of it, throwing clothes and food all over the floor.

Shielding his eyes, he said, "Ever wanted to travel?" to Turcaret. "Well now's your chance." He fired the laser, flicking it quickly right-to-left.

The worst part was reaching into the sarcophagus in the dark, and pulling Turcaret's mostly-severed head off his body. When he had the stinking thing free, Axel jammed it into his pack and stepped back to retch.

"I better get a medal for this."

"Locked onto your signal," said the ship. "We're on final approach. We should be visible to you."

Axel listened. Confused shouting came from outside the crypt. "We see you," he sent.

It was easy to open the door of the crypt and saunter out. Nobody was paying him the least bit of attention.

It was also easy to see, since the sky was lit from horizon to horizon by the vernier engines of a nicely solid and real military starship about a kilometer overhead. As it stopped directly over the field, threw out four massive landing legs and began its descent with a deafening roar, the soldiers around the crypt bolted for the trees. Axel put his fingers in his ears, squinted, and walking out to meet the ship.

In moments it was down, metal feet sinking into the snow, then the ground, finally easing to a stop as thousands of tonnes of weight made the ship's diamond-fiber muscles quiver. The vernier engines, which it held high above itself on long arms, coughed and fell silent. Axel took his fingers out of his ears, and shook his head rapidly. A breeze smelling of hot metal tickled his cheek.

A wide door in the bottom of the craft opened, and a broad ramp extended to touch ground. Men in vacuum armor jumped out and began to take up firing positions. Axel felt warmly happy, despite the fact that two of them had their guns trained on him.

He raised his arms. "I come in peace," he said in High English.

An officer strolled down the ramp. "Are you Chan?"

"The very same. Good to see you, major."

"I'm sure," said the officer drily. "We don't appreciate being used as a taxi service, Mister Chan. Where's your companion?"

He nodded in the direction of the house. "They took her. A little local trouble, I'm afraid. Uh, can I lower my arms now?"

"At ease." The two marines lowered their weapons. "I suppose we'll have to go ask for her back."

"Here," said Axel. He lobbed the pack at the major, who caught it awkwardly. "This should pay our way, once it's been analyzed. And, uh, can we get Marya and get out of this hell-hole now? I'll bet the swans will be here any second."

The major opened the pack, gagged, and dropped it. "What the hell—?"

"It's a long story," said Axel. "And if you want to hear it, we'd better get a move on."

The major looked from the pack to Axel and back again. Then he whirled and said, "Nonfatal settings! Fan out. I'm going to negotiate a hostage situation." He walked towards the house, paused, and said "Coming?" to Axel.

Axel grinned. "Thanks. Appreciate it."

Three hours later, he sat at a viewscreen and watched as Ventus fell away below. Too bad it was night; he would have dearly loved to have traced the course of the journeys he and his companions had made across the land.

Every now and then the display flickered with blue-white light. The Diadem swans were attacking. While they had easily taken out Marya's ship, they were no match for this cruiser, as the captain had pointed out proudly and at length.

Axel was tired, bruised and chilled to the bone. Soon he would go take that bath he had been dreaming of for months; for now, he couldn't take his eyes off the screen.

Somewhere below Calandria was getting ready to confront Armiger. Axel had argued with the captain for a good hour, trying to convince the man to follow Marya's directions to the queen's palace and interrupt the siege. They probably had enough firepower in this ship to eliminate Armiger; but it had been the god Choronzon who had hired Axel and Calandria to kill Armiger. As far as the Archipelagic military were concerned, the war against 3340 was over.

Axel no longer cared about Armiger anyway. He just wanted to get Calandria back.

"Hey."

He turned. Marya stood in the doorway. She had cleaned herself up, and looked beautiful in a snow-white gown, framed by the door's ivy in warm summer-like light from hidden sconces. She stood barefoot on the genetically-tailored grass of the ship's civilian quarters, and appeared relaxed and confident, as though she had not been squawling and biting the arms of medieval soldiers earlier in the evening.

"You're amazing," he said.

"You look like hell," she laughed. "Why don't you get some rest? There's nothing more we can do now."

He turned back to the window. "We have to go back," he said. "We're not done here."

She touched his arm. "I know. First we'll have the remains of Turcaret analyzed. They may give us some valuable insights into why the Winds won't talk to us. And then we'll go back for your friends."

"It's just that..." He didn't want to say it. Marya waited patiently.

"We have to get Calandria," he said. "She's so obsessed with 3340, and Armiger. Sometimes I think... I think she wants to lose. Wants to die, or something worse."

Marya frowned. "We can't save her," she said.

Axel turned back to the viewscreen. Ventus was visibly a globe now, in crescent phase as the ship headed away from the sun. Diadem twinkled brightly above the limb of the horizon.

"If not us," he said, "then who?"

31

"Parliament's forces are on the move," said Matthias. "He's going to try it."

Matthias was in full battle gear—not the gold-worked breastplate and shimmering epaulets Galas had always seen him in before. In plain black leather and iron, he looked like a common soldier now, except for the red flag rising above his back that signalled his rank. Nothing he could have said or done could have projected the gravity of the situation more than this simple change of clothing.

Galas was briefly ashamed. She was dressed as always in velvet and gauze finery. She pictured herself picking up a sword, strapping on a shield and entering the fray like some barbarian queen. She would love that. She would love to do anything rather than what she had to do.

Regally, she nodded to Matthias. "Go then. You have my complete confidence."

"My lady..." For a second his composure cracked. He was an old man suddenly, saddled with an impossible task. They would lose this battle; both knew it.

Galas smiled most carefully; her responsibility now was to act the part for which she had been born. So that these people died believing in... something, anything. Even if it was a failed dream.

"Dear Matthias, I only meant I would wish to have no one else in command of my force, now or ever."

"Thank you, your majesty." He bowed. "But I have given equal authority over to General Armiger. He will be commanding the defense of the gate."

"Good." He bowed again, and turned to leave.

"Matthias?" She couldn't go through with it—perhaps she could hide her true feelings from the rank and file, but it would be unworthy to do so to her closest friends. When he looked back with a puzzled look, Galas said, "No one should have to die for me."

He glared at her. "You are the rightful monarch and heir, blessed by the Winds. We would all be honored to die to defend you." He walked quickly away.

Galas stared after him. She felt a stab of pain in her chest—sorrow made physical—and hugged herself miserably.

Dawn had just broken. Morning light slanted in through the ruined windows of the great hall. The shattered flame pattern worked in stained glass seemed like a centuries-old joke only now reaching its punch-line. To hinder Lavin's men from gaining access to the tower through the thin walls of the hall, Matthias had doused everything in here with oil. This great chamber would be an oven soon.

Men in heavy battle armor ran back and forth, faces blank with concentration or fear. One or two even laughed, but it was forced bravado; they knew she was here, they wanted to prove themselves to her even in this situation.

She should be doing something.

"You!" She pointed at one of the running men. He stopped dead in his tracks.

"Your majesty?"

"I wish to give a... a final address to the commanders. Are they here?"

He shook his head. "They're dispersed about the walls, your highness. To call them back would be..."

She waved her hand. "Go on. I'm sorry. Go on."

They were bringing in ladders to lean up against the tall windows. She was just in the way now. Galas stepped back to let a procession of men past, then flipped the hem of her dress up over the pooling oil, and stalked back into the tower.

It was even worse in here—pandemonium as blacksmiths, carpenters, and anybody with nothing better to do tore up the floorboards of the tower's back entryway. Armiger had some use for them; no one questioned the sanity of the move. Only half the first floor was wood anyway; the front reception area had a floor of marble. She hurried, hopping up the wooden servants' stairway while sweating men tore the steps out behind her.

"Can I help?" she asked one of the sappers, who was straining with a crowbar against the ancient wood.

He lost his grip and stumbled. "Your—your highness?" He went down on one knee, inadvertently stabbing his shin on an upthrust nail. He ignored the injury, and awaited her orders.

She reached out. "Please—I want to help. Tell me what to do."

He jerked back in horror. "Your highness, no! This is hard work, and it's not safe. You should be above, in the stone halls where fire won't reach."

"I see." She made her face into the royal mask again. With a curt nod, she left the man to his work, ascending to the marble-floored corridor that led to the tower's entrance hall.

She came out on the first landing above the main entrance. This part of the Summer Palace had been held sacred by the defenders until last night. It had remained as she remembered it from infancy, the paintings, chandeliers, statuary all in place, the servants ready in their niches. Now the great bronze doors were invisible under piled stone and bracing timbers, and the deep carpets and tapestries were grey with powdered stone and sawdust from the effort of blocking up the entrance. There was no one here now, but overturned tables and other barricades lay ranked like pews aimed at the entrance. Should the attackers get this far, the defenders would assail them from behind these barricades, killing and dying to prevent even so much as a single man from running up the stairs that had been built to welcome visitors. They would all die in the end, of course, and they knew it. Lavin's men would spill into the tower; they would force her duennas up against the walls and kick down her door. By then she would be dead. Everyone knew that too. But nothing in heaven or earth could alter the course of things.

Except one thing...

Galas' breath caught in her throat. She nearly fell, and braced herself on the stone balustrade that she had slid down once as a girl—when she was merely the mad princess.

If she were to die now, the siege would end without further bloodshed. It was simple.

"Oh," she said aloud. If she cast herself from the tower, in full view of both attackers and defenders, then Matthias would live, Armiger and his Megan would live, her maids and cooks and the refugees from the experimental towns would be spared. They would be so disappointed in her, of course; and no one would ever follow the teachings of a suicide.

They won't understand, she thought, as she walked slowly up the flight that led to the audience chamber. "How could they?"

She had no one person to love. Of necessity, she had to love all those around her—her defenders, the naive and idealistic fools who had swallowed her half-truths knowing them for what they were but keeping faith that she reasons to lie, that she would lead them to earthly salvation. In the end, her written ideology, the philosophy and new morals she had preached, were all means to an end. That end could never be reached; Armiger had taught her that. If so, then what mattered their disappointment, their disillusionment? They would hate her for leaving them alive, but they would be alive, and a life lived in bitterness was still better than a death colored by useless fanaticism.

She entered the audience chamber. Three of her duennas stood about the room, looking aimless and scared. They rushed to her when she entered, but said nothing. Their eyes searched out hers.

"Every enlightened path can turn on itself, and become a new tyranny," she said. "The process begins the moment you truly, in your heart, believe in yourself."

"Your highness, are you all right?" Their hands touched her arms, her dress. Like everyone else, they were coping with the fear of death by displacing their concerns on her.

"Leave me!" She stepped out of their grasp. "I am as I have always been."

Before they could answer or follow, she ran across to the side entrance that led to her apartments. Slamming the door behind her, she bolted it.

Two more of her maids stood here in the little chamber where she had met with Lavin. They were staring at her, openmouthed.

"Go away!" She swept past them.

Ah. The stairs to the roof. This was all too simple, really. She had done her best, but the majority of people would simply never understand her. Armiger was right—the only paths forward for humanity lay in the tyranny of some demagogue or an inflexible ideology, or worst of all the tyranny of condescension. There were no queens or kings in the great interstellar civilization of which Armiger spoke. There was no one who stood in a position to gaze down upon it all.

She was half-way up the steps when her legs gave out. She wasn't winded; some force seemed to push her down against the stones.

It was like a black cloud on the edges of her vision—some thought she was denying herself. What had she been saying to herself just now? Tyranny—yes, the tyranny of condescension. Her reasons for this were—they were—

The world had narrowed to the grainy stones centimeters below her. She was gasping, unable to breathe. The kingdom—her plans—

Lavin.

She gave a shriek and lurched to her feet, stepping on the hem of her gown and tearing it. Zig-zagging, bouncing off the walls of the stairwell, she stumbled to the rooftop.

There were men here; catapults. They were staring out at the smoke. Distant thuds signalled incoming missiles from Lavin's steam cannon.

There was an open coign, across an open span of roof. She only had seconds now to endure this certain knowledge that the one person whom she had loved had come to kill her.

There were no more defenses. The guardian thoughts, her plans, the abstract perfection of her self-built ideology, lay in ruins. Galas was alone with the unendurable pain of her own failure, and so she ran to the edge of the roof with one hope in mind, that the stones of the courtyard would raise a wall against the pain once and for all.

She flung herself forward, saw the stones below and knew release—

—and was pulled back from the brink by shouting men.

Galas screamed, and fought, and screamed again. Struggling, screaming, she was dragged back across the roof and down the stairs, to the waiting arms of her duennas.

Calandria May stood next to one of the steam cannon. She held her section of a long ladder over her head, and listened with the other men as their commander told them the riches awaiting those who had volunteered to be first to storm the palace walls.

The steam cannon hissed and bucked, distracting her with its raw primitive power. It was a simple device—just a boiler that aimed its steam at a crude turbine. The turbine turned a wooden wheel like a narrow mill wheel six meters across. Instead of scooping water, its vanes took up gravel and stones and white hunks of rock salt from a hopper underneath, swept it around and up through a covered section and released it at the top of the circle. A steady stream of gravel and stones spewed at the walls, bringing back a crackling sound like a distant rockfall.

Her force was one of ten taking up positions near the main gates of the palace. The steam cannon had swept the walls like brooms, knocking the defenders down or sending them scurrying for cover. Cannon inside the walls were firing back, but they were now firing blind. Every now and then a stream of falling stones would send one of the assault teams to ground. Some men were hit, and when they fell they often didn't get up again.

Taking the main gates directly was impossible. The portcullis was sunken by about four meters, and the ceiling of the entranceway was full of murder holes. The defenders were waiting to pour molten lead on anyone who tried to enter that way.

Lavin's army was on the move all across the valley. The long wall that surrounded the palace would be assaulted in at least ten places within her sight, and she had no doubt Lavin had forces coming in from the north as well. There was no way the besieged force could man the entire stretch of wall. They would have to pull back.

When they did it would be to the tower that loomed above the main gates. Everything important would happen there. The queen was there. Armiger would be there too.

A sword hung from Calandria's belt. Over her back was slung a long, burlap-wrapped object that clanked when she moved. The microwave gun was heavy, but it was the only thing in the arsenal of nanotech seeds from Marya's ship that stood a chance of knocking down Armiger. When flights of stones rained down from beyond the walls, Calandria moved to shelter it before covering her own head. Without it, she had no reason to be here.

A distant roar reached her ears. A kilometer down the valley, the first assault wave ran forward, carrying their ladders like gangs of ants. Figures on horseback gestured with swords. Behind them, the steam cannon inched closer to the walls.

Her heart was hammering. When she looked around, she saw the same expression of mindless fear in the eys of the men with her. They were all in the same boat—carried forward by habits of training, minds blank with fear hence too stupid to sensibly turn and run. It was this stupor of fear that would later be counted as courage.

A loud crack sounded from ahead; the sound echoed across the valley and back. Looking up she saw a section of the gate tower's wall tumbling outward in a cloud of dust. The heavier cannon stationed a hundred meters behind her had found a weak point. Now a black hole became visible under the drifting grey pall.

"That's it, lads! Our door!" The commander bellowed and windmilled his arms, and Calandria found herself running forward with the others, thinking nothing, looking everywhere for a place to hide, a foxhole, a barricade, anywhere out of sight of the men with her who would see her hide; and they too looked around with the same eyes, and continued to run.

For a while she had to concentrate on her footwork, chained as she was to her companions by the heavy ladder. When she next looked up they were under the walls, and dark smoke was pouring out of the hole in the gate tower.

Sand exploded where she'd been about to step. Nearby someone screamed. She heard heavy bangs tha must be musket fire. The ladder jiggled. Someone cursed monotonously over and over again; others coughed and over it all lay the rattle of falling rocks, the thud of footfalls and distant booming.

"Halt!" She halted. "Ladder up!" She hopped, pushing it as it miraculously lofted up onto the perspective-narrowed white wall of the tower. The rockfall noises had stopped, meaning the steam cannon had been turned away to let them climb; but that also meant the defenders could emerge from hiding.

Sure enough, more stones and musket balls were coming down. She reached back, feeling the burlap for any sign it had been hit. No.

The first men went up the ladder. Two promptly fell down again. Everyone had their shields up, grinning humorlessly at one another under their shadow as unidentifiable stuff thudded off the wood.

The mob pressed her forward, and suddenly Calandria was climbing, squashed between a man ahead and a man behind her.

Up twelve rungs, over a broken one, left hand closing on splinters, right on slick blood. The man above her stopped, began cursing wildly. Everyone below shouted at him. "I'm hurt, I'm hurt!" he cried; drops of blood hit Calandria's arm as he struggled with his shattered shoulder.

"Get off! We don't give a damn! Boy, cut his ham-strings! Get him off the ladder or we're all done for!"

She glanced down. The fall would kill him. "Do it!" shouted Maenan, who was on the ladder behind her. "Do it or I'll cut you down and do it myself."

Something big fell by her left shoulder. Calandria drew the knife from her waist and reached up. "You've got to move," she shouted at the injured man.

"I can't jump," he screamed. "I'll die!"

Maenan stabbed Calandria in the ankle. She cursed and thrust upward herself.

"You bastard," whimpered the injured man. "Bastard." He shot her a deeply offended look. He was barely twenty-five if that, with black stubble, dark eyebrows and surprisingly long eyelashes above his blue eyes. "Bastard," he said, blinking, and then he let go of the ladder.

Just climb. She did, but she was crying.

There was screaming above. Another dark shape plummeted past. Before she knew it Calandria was at the hole in the wall, sucking lungfulls of wood smoke. Blinded, she groped for the broken stones, and pulled herself into the breach.

It was hot here—burning hot. Somebody was crowding her from behind, so she had no choice but to go forward and suddenly realizing she was stepping into a fire she staggered and went down on one knee.

Flames licked up her leg. Calandria screamed and flung herself forward, rolling past burning logs and coming to a crouch on the inside of a very large hearth. The smoking body of a man lay across the logs next to her. In the lurid light of the fire she saw men struggling in a large triangular room.

The defenders were picking off her people as each one staggered out of the broken fireplace. Everyone who came up this ladder was going to die.

A sword swung down, clipping her arm and sending a spasm of pain through her shoulder. Calandria rolled, did a sweep with her foot and was rewarded as her attacker fell over. She vaulted over him and straight-armed the man behind him. The room was a maze of armed men; she ducked and kicked and tried to get to the door.

Swords fell across her back and jabbed her flanks. Her package clanked. She cursed and redoubled her efforts.

She got turned around and ended up in a corner. It was slaughter over by the fireplace. Maenan was dead, as was every one of the men she had met over the last several days. Three desperate defenders faced her now, with more behind them.

She had hoped to delay using her weapon until she confronted Armiger-and not only because its presence would alert the Winds. "Sorry," she said, and swung the package off her shoulder. She pulled the burlap off the gun and raised it just as they closed on her.

The microwave gun chuffed, and fire shot to left and right from its barrel as first of its nano-built energy charges let go. The man in front of her coughed and went down. She turned the weapon on the next one and then the next. She was screaming now, tears streaming down her face making it hard to see.

As soon as the door was clear she ran for it. The only thought in her head was to find Armiger now and free herself from having to kill anyone else.

She found herself on the battlements. Two walls ran from this gate tower to the main tower of the palace, forming a narrow avenue. There were two steam cannon down there, ready to send their streams of gravel at anyone who made it through the gates or—

—made it onto the walls.

She saw the blur of flying rocks an instant before they tore the flagstones from under her.

Lavin had given his instructions. There was nothing he could do now but trust Hesty and the other commanders. He hated to leave the siege in the middle, but he was doing the right thing. For the first time in months, he felt calm, in control of the situation.

"Where's our grave robber?" He snapped his fingers impatiently.

"Here, lord." Enneas jogged up. The man looked much better than he had a few days ago; his ruined back was covered in salves and bandages, then the protective casing of a breastplate. His broken arm was in a cast, and the bruises on his face were almost faded. He saluted with his free hand.

Lavin nodded to him. "We're going in."

They stood among the tumbled stones of the ruined temple a kilometer east of the summer palace. From here, a sand-drifted causeway led to a square gate tower that had once been the main entrance to the palace. The gates of that tower had long since been sealed with heavy stones, and the causeway was left to the mercies of the desert. What Enneas and a few others had known, however, was that other processional causeways built in the same era as this one all contained narrow passages deep inside the masonry. Lavin's sappers had found the "spirit walk" right where Enneas had said it would be. They had penetrated all the way to the palace, and turned back only when they came to the labyrinth of the old catacombs. Enneas would be the guide through those; more than that, he was Lavin's good-luck charm.

"You understand the plan," Lavin said to Hesty as he followed Enneas into the dark square mouth that opened under a half-fallen wall of yellow stone. "The assault on the walls is a diversion, but it has to genuinely tie up their forces. We want to pull them out of the tower to the walls. My force will penetrate the tower and take the queen. When we signal by trumpet you will cease the assault."

Hesty shook his head. "I understand that. What I don't understand is why you have to be the one to go inside."

"I'm the one who's responsible. And I want to ensure the queen's safety."

"It's dangerous, sir. If you die—"

"Then you continue the assault until we've taken the queen by other means. What I'm trying to do is end this by the cleanest possible means. It's worth risking myself at this point."

He stared Hesty down. Finally the man saluted. "All right." Lavin ducked his head and entered the cool darkness of the tunnel. Enneas waited there with fifteen men, the elite of Lavin's personal guard.

Four of the men had bugles; three had bull's-eye lanterns. They were crowded into a little antechamber next to a narrow slot in the wall. Had he not known this was a tunnel, Lavin would have taken it for a chink between two of the causeway's huge foundation stones.

"M'lord." Enneas took one of the lanterns and, turning sideways, slid into the gap. Lavin watched him worm his way in, expecting to see him get stuck at any moment. He kept going, however, and after a moment Lavin reined in his own fear and followed.

Cold stone pressed against him from all sides. He had to turn his head and shuffle sideways, keeping an eye fixed on the wavering light of Enneas' lantern. If that light were to vanish he might give in to fear here, though he never had on the field of battle.

He went a hundred meters like this, panic rising gradually as he came to understand just how far underground he was. Finally the passage opened up a bit, and he was able to crowd in next to Enneas, who had paused to wait for him.

"This is my domain," said the old man. "The discarded trash of the noble lifestyle. Look." He held up the lantern; the light glittered off metal near the floor.

"What's this?"

"Offerings to the Winds of the earth," said Enneas, his voice rich with contempt. The lantern light glittered off coins and some brass candlesticks that lay half-buried in the sand. "You see these words?" He indicated some lettering scratched into the walls. "It's a letter from the foreman of the work gang here, to the Winds. Asking them to bless his family for the offerings." He snorted. "I could live for six months off the coins here."

Lavin admired his passion, but shook his head anyway. "For all you know, the Winds did bless his house. Come, we've no time to dawdle."

Enneas went on, grumbling. Lavin's men padded quietly behind as they wove through a low undulant tunnel with a sandy floor. The air was cold and dead, and it would have been silent except that faint drum-beat thuds sounded at irregular intervals. Steam cannon impact, he realized.

As they progressed, the intermittent thumps grew louder and louder, until with each one dust and grit shook loose from the low ceiling. Enneas glanced back several times, a worried look on his face. Lavin gestured for him to keep going.

After one particularly solid thump, a low sliding noise came from ahead of them. It went on for a few seconds. When silence fell again Lavin could hear Enneas swearing.

"What is it?"

"I don't want to speculate. Come on." They went forward faster now. The air was becoming thick with dust; Lavin could barely seen the glow of the lantern now. His fear of the confinement was gone now, replaced by a very real worry about the effect his bombardment was having on the tunnel.

Enneas cursed loudly. Lavin bumped against him; he had stopped.

The old grave robber waved the lantern, showing how the walls leaned in suddenly, and tumbled stone choked the remaining space between them.

Enneas looked over his shoulder; the faint light silhouetted him, so that he looked like a man-shaped hole amidst the amber angles of stone. "It's a cave in," he said. "We're stuck."

32

Jordan and Tamsin rose within a column of water, past strata of worn stone in all the colors of the rainbow. Light filtered down from somewhere far above, illuminating the glistening membrane of the bubble in which they travelled. Never in all his imaginative journeys had Jordan pictured such a place as this. Every now and then they passed giant slots in the walls of the shaft, in which he glimpsed galleries full of verdigrised machines. Then the thrumming of giant engines would make the membrane of their bubble shake and dance; ring-shaped standing waves would form in the meniscus and interfere, making little landscapes of jewellike diamonds in its resilient surface.

Tamsin had conquered her fear—in fact, she was now bolder than Jordan. She kept trying to climb the curving wall of the bubble to see some new wonder. She would slide back and bump him with elbow or knee.

Whenever they passed one of those titanic chambers, Jordan's heart seemed to skip a beat. He sensed the forces gathered here, and felt awe. But he stared into the green depths and said to himself, this is our creation, and repeating it, felt the awe deepen and merge with a new emotion he couldn't name.

It was like the first time his mother had let him hold the hand of a younger boy to lead him along the path from the village to Castor's manor. He was entrusted with a responsibility, and felt humbly determined to carry it through.

The Winds were omnipotent. They were also lost and, he now believed, afraid. The assault of the Heaven hooks on the Boros manor now seemed to him an act of desperation on their part. They would never be so mindlessly destructive in the normal course of things.

He and Tamsin rose upon the palm of Mediation, until the light above became a wavering disk and the shaft opened out to all sides. They were in a lake or lagoon, still rising. Before he could say anything, they slid sideways, and the bubble collapsed just as they were about to reach the surface.

For a second all he felt was freezing cold. Jordan kicked out into a confusion of bubbles and white froth, and was on the edge of panic when he felt a surface below his feet. He let himself settle for a moment, then kicked up from it and drew a deep breath of air.

Tamsin was swimming vigorously for the nearby shore. Awkwardly he pushed himself to follow her. Coughing and shivering, he stumbled up a beach of white pebbles to collapse next to her. She was already on her feet, hands on her hips as she stared around them.

They were on the shore of a pond that nestled among golden dunes. There was a little grass next to the pond, but no trees or sign of human habitation. The dunes hid whatever else might be nearby.

"So," said Tamsin. She was frowning. "Where are we, then?"

"I don't know. Ka?"

"I am here," said the little Wind, from somewhere in the vicinity of Jordan's collar.

The slight breeze was cuttingly cold. He stood up, shuddering.

"Command some heat," said Tamsin.

"In a minute." He looked around, found the tallest dune, and headed in that direction.

They said nothing as they climbed the sliding side of the thing. It took longer than he expected, and by the time they reached the top they were both covered with sand that stuck to their wet clothes and skin like plaster.

"Damned desals," muttered Tamsin. "They could at least have gotten us to shore."

It was even colder up here in the breeze, but you could see forever. Jordan shielded his eyes from the watery sun and turned slowly.

"Oh." He pointed. "We go that way."

"How do you know—" She stopped when she saw where he was pointing.

At least twenty thin spires of smoke rose above an indistinct patch on the western horizon.

"They've taken the middle tower!" The bearer of the bad news was black with soot and bleeding from a wound in his shoulder. The gangs by the steam cannon stopped working and fell into a confused battle of talk. Armiger shrugged.

"Let them have it. Makes a bigger target."

This comment was relayed down the line, eliciting an uncertain cheer from the gunners. "So shall we turn the beasts on the tower, then?" asked one.

They were set up in the center of the palace parade grounds, east of the queen's walled garden. From here the cannon could be aimed anywhere except at the houses northwest of the keep. From here Armiger could see and judge most of the action, but not what was taking place there. What he could see was smoke and chaos at six points along the walls; fires in the tent town and boiling mobs of refugees trying to get into the great hall or over the walls into the garden. The mobs were getting in the way of Matthias' mobile squads, who were supposed to be crisscrossing the grounds quickly to tend to potential breaches. They were bogged down amid screaming women and children, unable to reach the troubles spots along the southern walls.

The only really important news came from the semaphores. Armiger let his glance touch on each of the flag teams in turn, filling in a mental picture of how Lavin's forces were arrayed around the palace.

"He's up to something." This was no determined assault—just a lot of smoke and bluster. Armiger had no idea what Parliament's general might be planning, and that worried him far more than the loss of the gate tower.

"Forget the tower, load the charges like I showed you!" He waved his sword in a tight circle over his head. All down the line, the gunners began lighting the sacks he'd had prepared last night. Then as the great wheels of the cannon began to turn, they fed the smoking bundles into the hoppers.

"What good will this do?" whined one of Matthias' lieutenants. The man was a tenth-generation noble, completely ineffectual. He was positioned here, away from the walls, so he could do as little harm as possible. "All those things do is make a stink. That's not going to stop Lavin."

"You'd be surprised," said Armiger. The sacks were filled with a combination of pitch, oil, wood, offal, and metal shavings, designed to produce a good imitation of industrial smog. The Winds would pay little attention to wood smoke, however large the conflagration, since it mostly just released carbon that trees had previously fixed from the atmosphere anyway. This stuff, though, would loose ozone, sulphur dioxide, maybe a little cyanide into the atmosphere. With an extra whiff of hot metals for good measure, it should whip the Winds into a fury.

He watched with satisfaction as the first of the smoking bags lofted over the walls. The environmental insult would be coming from Lavin's camp. Lavin would know what he was doing; the fatal results of the battle where Armiger had first used sulphur were widely known now.

"We should be sweeping those walls clean!" The lieutenant pointed.

Armiger shook his head. "Just wait. And be ready to run for cover." He would have preferred to have used this tactic as soon as the assault started, but he had wanted to make sure that Lavin's camp no longer contained enough men to extinguish these fume-bombs. The attackers were engaged at the walls now; in the chaos, this smoke should be overlooked.

"What do you mean, run for cover?"

"I mean you might want to dig a hole and bury yourself in it now, because they may decide to take away all the buildings when they get here."

"They...?" The lieutenant's face went pale.

Armiger watched him with amusement. "This is no time for half measures."

The gunners were well into the rhythm of it now. Time to turn his attention elsewhere. Armiger strolled away from them, leaving the lieutenant stuttering.

He had to trust that he was still invisible to the Winds. With luck they would concentrate their fury on Parliament's encampment. He certainly hoped he could get everyone inside and under cover before the forces of the Ventus Terraforming System arrived.

It was the biggest risk he had taken since coming to this world. He was deliberately inviting the scrutiny of the Winds. Nothing else about this siege could threaten his existence or his plans. From a strategic point of view, risking a meeting with the Winds now was idiotic.

Armiger didn't care. There were people he felt for in the palace. He would surely survive this assault, but he doubted he could save them—at best, he could probably escape with Megan, but Galas was the queen bee, the attackers would swarm her the instant they glimpsed her. No, it was better to annihilate Lavin's forces using the Winds, and hope that they left the ordinary stone and wood of the palace alone.

He read the situation from the semaphores again, and made his decision. The chaos of battle was reaching its peak. Under its cover, he would be able to spirit Megan and Galas away from this place. If all went according to schedule, the Winds would arrive after his escape and pin down Lavin's forces, giving Armiger and his people time to complete their escape.

He ran for the keep. Missiles rained down into the nearby tents of the refugees. Armiger tried not to think about their fate, or that of the men on the battlements who were fighting and dying to ensure his escape.

"There is a way," said Enneas. He began pulling down rocks with his good hand. "See there? That crack?"

They had all the lanterns here now, and everybody who could be was crammed up against the rock fall. Lavin focussed on breathing deeply to still his claustrophobia. He was afraid he would have an attack of his old vertigo here, and that was the worse thing that could possibly happen.

The little chink Enneas had found looked impossibly small to get through. The old robber picked up one of the lanterns and stuck his arm in it, then twisted to peer after it. "Yes!" he shouted excitedly. "I can see right through."

"We can't get through that," grumbled somebody.

"You can't," agreed the thief. He sized up the men pressed up against him. "I can; I'm little. He can, so can he..." He appraised Lavin. "And so can you, sir. But we'll have to remove our armor."

Lavin's throat was dry. Worm into that little crack? With a thousand tonnes of stone poised to collapse on him?

He glanced at the faces of his men. They were determined. Enneas seemed positively jubilant; this kind of challenge appeared to be what he lived for.

"All right," said Lavin. "You first, thief. Show us how to shove a mouse through a keyhole."

Enneas began unlacing his armor. "This is going to hurt," he muttered. "Doing it one-handed will be hard. I'll need some help."

In the end it took two men on either side and one underneath to slide Enneas into the chink. He left his lantern behind, held his broken arm tight to his side and pulled himself into pitch darkness on his scabbed back with no complaints.

"Damn," whispered the man next to Lavin. "I would never have believed it."

Lavin grinned. "Pass him his lantern."

"Come on!" Enneas waved from the other side. "It's clear from here on in."

When it was his turn, Lavin too went without complaint. The thief was a braver man than he, it seemed. Life never tired of teaching new lessons.

They were able to get the four smallest men inside along with Lavin and Enneas. This was not the force Lavin needed for his first plan, which had been to sneak in, grab the queen, and sneak out again. There were enough men to try his second plan, which was to steal into the queen's chambers, take her and dangle her from a window until the defenders surrendered. For that plan, he needed only enough men to hold a doorway for some critical minutes.

They were all dressed in the colors of the royalists, which should help; it still depended on how many soldiers were now in the tower. If Hesty had done his work, they were spread out on the walls, ready to fall back when Lavin's forces made onto the grounds.

Hesty had been instructed to wait two hours before exploiting any breach. Lavin didn't want the defenders rabbiting up the palace steps too soon.

The others passed them their armor and weapons, and when they were ready Lavin gestured with his chin, and they moved forward into broader and quieter precincts.

Enneas seemed happy now, despite having opened the wounds on his back. He hummed as he looked around himself alertly. "Nearly there," he said after some time. "Look for a side passage."

They found it, right where Enneas had said it would be. The space was little more than a crawlway, but the thief slipped into it without difficulty, and the others followed. This passage had been dug through the sandy soil under the palace, and soil crumbled and fell in Lavin's eyes and mouth with each pull he made to follow Enneas. Blinking and coughing, he finally sat up next to the thief to discover they were at the bottom of an eight-foot deep pit. The ceiling above the pit was of fitted stone, arching toward some pillar out of sight.

"Old cistern," said Enneas. "We're at the farthest extent of the catacombs. It's a maze, so follow close and don't take any turnoffs on your own." He looked at them expectantly. "Well? Somebody give me a boost."

When they were up and ready to set off after Enneas, Lavin nodded to one of his men. He had given him a sack of copper pennies earlier, and now that man took up the rear, and dropped a penny every few meters. Lavin didn't want to have to rely on Enneas to find his way out of here.

They came to a stone staircase leading up. "That's it," said Enneas. "Those stairs take you to the lower servants' way, and there's a door there that exits right into the front hall of the palace."

"I've seen it," said Lavin. "Thanks. You stay here and wait for us."

"Gladly," said the thief.

Lavin walked up the steps, took a turn, opened a door and despite his confidence was somehow still surprised to find himself standing in the empty entrance hall below Galas' audience chamber.

Calandria rolled over. Her head was pounding, and her shoulders and right arm were very sore. She looked up, saw smoke, raised her head and heard shouting and the roar of muskets.

She lay on the parapet of one of the walls stretching from the gate to the main tower. Rocks and flinders of stone lay all around her. Several bloody bodies dotted the walkway nearer the gate.

Where was her gun? Levering herself up, she spotted the microwave gun lying a few meters away. It appeared unharmed. She was superficially battered, her helmet dented, face and shoulders bruised, but otherwise unharmed.

She crab-walked over to the gun, then crouched under the crenels away from the sweep of the steam cannon below. They had stopped their deadly barrage in any case; it looked like the assault on the tower had failed.

For a while she stayed there. She didn't want to think about where she was or what she had done to get here. The things she would have to do next might be worse.

She knew what Armiger looked like from Jordan's descriptions. He might be anywhere within the acres of palace grounds. She was betting he would be in the tower, with the queen.

It seemed insane to move, but her use of the microwave gun might bring the Winds down on the palace anyway. Using it, she could clear a path through any number of defenders. She couldn't bring herself to turn it on human opponents again, however. She would find another way in.

Something was burning in the courtyard near the main doors. The smoke was rich and grey, and it made a smothering pall that hid the spot where her wall met the outside wall of the keep. Steps led down at that point, but she wouldn't use them; no doubt the main doors were securely barricaded by now.

There was a row of narrow windows seven meters above the point where the wall met the keep. Later there might be soldiers at those windows firing down into the courtyard; for now they were open and unmanned.

Calandria took off her boots and tied them over her shoulder. Then she started to climb the chipped and cracked face of the keep.

"I can't believe our luck," said Lavin. They were at the doors to the audience chamber. There was no one about.

One of his men shrugged. "Your plan worked perfectly, sir." His tone suggested no other outcome had been possible.

The sounds of the siege penetrated, as did the smell of smoke. In all his plans, Lavin had assumed the tower would be a hive of running men and hawk-eyed commandants. His strategy in this battle had been to draw the queen's force out to minimize the numbers here, but he had never dreamed it would work so well.

He revised his plans. They might be able to smuggle the queen out of here after all.

A scout eased the door open a crack and peered through. "I see no one... wait, there's one man."

"What's he doing?"

"Walking. Must have just gone up the stairs ahead of us and paused here for a second or something."

"Let me see." Lavin motioned him aside. They had agreed on how to deal with simple soldiers: they would walk right by them. Lavin might be recognizable to some officers and the generals, but to few others. And they were all dressed in the queen's livery.

So this man should present no problem...

Lavin cursed under his breath when he saw who it was. General Armiger walked slowly, his head down as if musing, hands clasped behind his back. He wore scrolled black armor, with a commander's flag jutting over his shoulder. He would notice any commotion, and Lavin had no doubt he knew where all his troops were supposed to be. They would have to kill him now, and as quietly as possible.

"Your invincible queen has tried to kill herself."

For an instant Lavin felt the words had been spoken to him; his heart almost stopped. Then he spotted the woman who had spoken. She stepped from the shadows of the doorway to the antechamber where Lavin had dined with Galas.

General Armiger took her in his arms, and she rested her cheek against his breastplate. "It is my fault," he said.

"What?" She drew back a little, looking up at him.

"I told her the truth. I took away her hope."

"She's only human, after all." The woman sighed. "Does that disappoint you?"

Lavin blinked. It couldn't be true. She would have held faith to the very end, in the face of any opposition. He knew her. Nothing could shake her confidence in her own ideals. Had he thought she could fall prey to despair, Lavin would have done anything he had to in his negotiations to ensure this assault did not happen. He would have made concessions.

If Galas despaired, then they had both lost, for that would mean the woman he had come to rescue no longer existed.

He forced himself to focus on the present situation. "We will walk in casually. Kasham, step behind him as we pass. Bahner, do likewise with the woman. A blade in the heart, then drag them behind the throne."

The men nodded. Lavin stood straight and swung the door open.

Armiger was walking quickly towards the far door. The woman stood where they had embraced, looking after him.

Lavin raised a hand, and his men halted in silence. Armiger reached the door to the antechamber, and passed through it without looking back.

Lavin caught Bahmer's eye and shook his head. Bahmer shrugged. Then they entered the room.

The woman turned, noted them with indifference, and walked to one of the tall windows on the right. She stared out as they passed by. Lavin led his men left to the antechamber, and they were through, as simply as that.

He stepped boldly into the corridor beyond the antechamber. A stone staircase led up to the left, and two broad wood-paneled corridors radiated right and ahead. There was a deep carpet on the floor, and portrait paintings on the walls. These must be Her apartments.

A man in servant's livery ran up. Lavin forced himself to stand perfectly still, although his heart was hammering. "Are you looking for the general, sir?" asked the servant.

"The queen, actually." He felt his men shifting uneasily behind him. They were close to breaking strain, he knew—any slight provocation now and they would unsheath their swords. He prayed they would remain as cool as he pretended to be.

"The queen is... indisposed," said the servant. "General Armiger is with her."

"Where?"

"Her closet, at the end of this corridor, but sir, General Armiger said they were not to be disturbed. He ordered even the duennas to leave."

Lavin sniffed. "This is critical to ending the siege," he said, and walked on.

They passed two more servants and five of the queen's maids, one of whom Lavin recognized. None looked at them. Then they were at the queen's door.

33

They were in sight of the palace walls when Jordan began to hear the song. It came from directly overhead, far above the smoky air and late autumn clouds. The last time he'd heard something like remotely like this, the sky had been filling with vagabond moons at the Boros estate. The sky was empty now.

Periodically as they trudged toward the siege, Jordan had paused and closed his eyes, to watch the events there unfolding through Armiger's eyes. He knew an assault on the palace was in full swing, but beyond that everything was confused. Armiger seemed to be moving purposefully, but since he didn't talk to himself he wasn't letting Jordan in on his thoughts.

"Going in there is suicide," Tamsin had said when he told her of the assault. "We need to stop and wait for it to end."

Maybe. But Jordan feared that the seemingly empty landscape around them would erupt at any second with minions of thalience. He could easily be caught by them before they reached the palace.

Only Armiger could oppose the Winds. Compared to them, the threat of these human armies seemed almost trivial.

"We have to tell him about Mediation and thalience," he told her. "He would have acted by now if he knew exactly what was going on. I don't believe the queen told him what he needed to know."

Tamsin started to answer, then seemed to think better of it. She glanced over her shoulder, eyes catching the leagues of open sand that lay between herself and her devastated home.

"None of us knows what we're doing, do we?" she said in a small voice.

Jordan looked at her, surprised. "No," he said finally. "Not even him, I guess."

"What about the swans?"

"The Winds of Mediation take care of the earth," he said. "Maybe if we can find somewhere underground to hide, we can escape the swans."

Tamsin squinted upward. "The sun's a funny color."

"I don't want to hear it." He shut his eyes briefly, inner vision trembling between Armiger and kaleidoscopic images from the siege. As had happened at the Boros manor, the local landscape was excited, stones, wood and plants all trading images and sounds on some frequency they rarely used. Jordan could see through their eyes when they did this; he saw fighting figures on the ground from the vantage point of smoke rising above the towers. He saw both inside and outside the great hall of the summer palace, where tense soldiers waited with tinder and flint to light a new and vastly larger conflagration should Parliament's forces breach the walls. He heard the confused shouts, the screams, and he heard weeping as he saw Armiger's hands reach to undo the ropes that bound the Queen of Iapysia to a gilded chair in her chambers.

"Ka," said Jordan. "I need your help now."

"You told me the truth," said Galas. "That is why I decided to end it." She stood shakily, massaging her wrists where the ropes had chafed.

Armiger shook his head angrily. "We have more important things to worry about than your kingdom." He threw down the ropes.

Galas' maids cowered in the corners of the opulent bed chamber. Two soldiers stood uncertainly by the door; they had been placed there to guard the queen against herself, and were suffering the abuse of the maids when Armiger entered.

Galas smoothed back her hair with one hand, staring wildly about herself. "What?" She turned and looked at him in puzzlement. "What did you just say?"

"You have a greater responsibility now," he said. "More than your kingdom is at stake."

Galas laughed. She tried to stifle the sound with her hand, but it kept coming, and she reeled toward the window, bent over, hands to her mouth. When she could speak again, she shouted, "And what about me? What say do I have in this? Or do I have none? Who gets to sacrifice me on their altar? Parliament? Lavin? You?"

The door swung back with a crash and five armed soldiers paced in. Their swords were drawn. The last one in shut the door behind himself and threw the latch.

"Galas," said the man at the head of the group, "I am afraid I must ask you to surrender."

Her two guards were suddenly against the wall with swords to their throats. The other two men had their blades leveled at Armiger.

"Lavin." She felt a deep feeling of cold wash over her. "You did come."

"I came to ensure your safety," said Lavin. "I said I'd let no one harm you. And I won't."

"Then the palace has fallen."

"Yes," said Lavin.

"No," said Armiger. "He has snuck in somehow. That's why you ordered your men not to come over the walls, isn't it? To keep our forces away?"

Lavin nodded curtly. "Kindly kneel on the floor, general. You too." He indicated the others in the room. "We are going to strike you unconscious; there's not enough rope to bind everyone. Anyone who struggles will be killed." He stepped up to Galas. "You will accompany us, your highness. If you try to call for help I have instructed my men to kill you." For a second he looked dizzy; he clutched at the back of the chair where Galas had been bound. "I can't do it myself. But it must be done, if there is no alternative."

"Your highness?" said one of her men. "Give the word and we will throw these traitors out the window."

"Do as he says," she said hoarsely. "There is no point in your dying too."

"But your highness—"

"Do it!"

The maids and the two guards knelt in a line. Two of Lavin's men stepped behind them. Galas flinched as the crying maids were struck down one by one, and the men who had stayed to protect her life. In moments they lay silent on the floor. One of the women had stopped breathing; blood pooled behind her ear. Galas stared at it until Lavin took her arm.

"Goodbye, General," Lavin said. The soldier standing behind Armiger raised his sword and slammed the pommel down on the back of Armiger's neck. There was a loud crack, but Armiger didn't even blink.

Armiger held the man's sword-arm before anyone could react, and then he was on his feet. With a casual motion he tossed the man out the window. For a shocked moment no one moved.

"No noise!" commanded Lavin. He grabbed Galas by the arm and pulled her out of the way as his other three men raised their swords to stab Armiger.

One staggered back, his own sword in his gut. The other two whirled, for Armiger was no longer where he had been.

Hands like iron clamped onto Galas' wrists, and then Armiger was hauling her towards the door. Lavin leaped to intercede, and Armiger side-kicked him. The general was sent flying into a wardrobe, shattering it.

"We must get you to safety," said Armiger. His voice was flat, his grip on Galas' arm like iron. He towed the queen out into the corridor, where several servants stood, looking bewildered and offended at his handling of the queen.

She was still half-stunned. Had that really been Lavin? It looked like him. "How did he get in here?" she heard herself ask.

Armiger stopped abruptly, making her stumble. "Good point," he said. "I'll interrogate him. You find Megan."

"What do you mean?"

"It's time to leave." He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. He seemed completely unruffled by what had just occurred. "The Diadem swans are coming," he said. "They may well obliterate Lavin's army. I broke the rules of war, Galas. I deliberately involved the Winds."

Galas shook her head. "Don't hurt Lavin."

For the first time he looked surprised. "If you wish." He let her go and turned.

"General Armiger?"

The voice was that of a woman. They both looked up, to find what at first seemed to be a soldier boy standing by the doors to the roof. It was a woman in bloodied armor. She had an oval face, dark brows and black hair that lay now in dusty tangles. She held something like a mirrored crossbow in her hands.

"Get Megan," said Armiger. He thrust Galas behind himself just as the woman's gleaming weapon spat fire.

Armiger screamed. Galas made herself run and not look back—around the corner, the way they had come.

And there stood Lavin, truly him this time, grim with his sword drawn.

"Come," he said, and reached for her.

Galas snatched her hand back. All her confusion and resentment boiled over. "Never! You destroyed me!"

"In time you'll understand why I had to do it," he said as he reached for her again.

"Help me!" At her cry, all the doors in the corridor opened and her servants poured forth.

Then Lavin had her wrist and twisted her arm behind her painfully. She felt the blade of his sword slide past her throat. "Back off!" he shouted. The servants stopped, their makeshift weapons raised.

"Idiots!" she screamed. "Kill him!"

In the moment while they hesitated Lavin pulled her to the end of the corridor, where it met the one that led to the stairs. She caught a confused glimpse of shattered wood and stone here, smoking embers on the carpet. A loud explosion sounded somewhere nearby; she felt a wave of heat and suddenly the ceiling split open like a ripe fruit. Lavin pulled her back just in time as beams and stonework clogged the corridor behind them.

She coughed; Lavin's sword nicked her throat. She heard him panting, heard herself cry out in pain from the way he twisted her arm. He dragged her along the hall, spun her around, and suddenly she saw Armiger. He lay on his face at the foot of the stairs. His armor was smoking. Over him stood the black-haired woman, weapon aimed at his head.

A musket shot spiked Galas' ears. The woman spun around and fell, limbs akimbo. Soldiers were coming down the stairs from the roof; one threw aside his smoking musket and drew his sword as he approached her.

Galas saw the woman's foot lash out to trip the man, then Lavin had her through the door into the antechamber of the audience chamber.

Lavin spun her around again, shoving her ahead of him now. She was dazed, but beginning to think again. She should just let him kill her. Or just fall like a dead weight that he could never carry. They entered the audience chamber. Megan stood by the throne, hands clasped nervously. "Your highness...?"

"Go to Armiger," she shouted. "He's hurt!"

Megan ran past them. Lavin picked up his pace, so they were trotting when they reached the main doors.

She needed to know what had happened to Armiger, Galas realized. That he and his woman survive was suddenly as important to her as Megan's survival had been to him. It was simply this that made her decide not to slide her throat along Lavin's sword, and vindictively bleed to death in his arms.

"You're a snake," she said. "I can't believe I loved you."

"I don't mind your cursing me," he said. "As long as you're cursing me, at least you're still alive."

"And I will curse you, as long as I do live!"

They were on the marble landing. "I know," he said. "I knew the price when I took on the task."

Armiger rolled over, gasping. His human body was nearly dead again. He had seen the microwaves from the woman's weapon, a blinding corona that had burst inside his body like a sun. His cells were in chaos; the nanotech skein of his real body was broken and burned. Another blast and he would have been incapacitated; three or four more and the damage would have been too much to recover from.

His human eyes could not see, but he sensed Megan above him. "My soldier," she whispered, as she drew him into her arms.

He reached out with his other senses. His attacker had been subdued; two soldiers sat on her back now as she struggled vainly. Her weapon lay neglected under smoking wood panels that it had blown from the wall.

The woman's voice carried suddenly. She had stopped struggling. "This man tried to kill the queen," she said. Her voice was calm, liquid, as convincing as any orator's. With his nanotech's sensors, Armiger could see that she lay facing him. Her eyes were open, searching out his. Her face was a mask.

A deeper sound reached his senses. Armiger cursed weakly. "Help me up," he said to Megan.

"No, you're hurt, don't move."

"They're here," he said. "The Winds. We have to get out of here."

"Oh—but you can't move!"

"I can. Help me!" She helped him up and he stood, blind and bent, above the woman who had attacked him. When he felt strong enough, he knelt and gathered up the weapon his mysterious attacker had used on him. He felt the Galactic workmanship immediately. This woman was from the Archipelago, doubtless a mercenary sent to pick off stragglers such as himself from 3340's force.

"Sir!" A soldier saluted. "What shall we do with her, sir?"

"Bind her in chains of iron," he said. "But strike her unconscious first."

"Sir."

He staggered into the antechamber, leaning heavily on Megan. "Where did they go?" he hissed.

"Who?"

"The queen, and General Lavin."

"This way. Please, you must rest."

"No! There is a secret way out. He has taken her to it. We must follow."

Thunder grumbled beyond the windows—but he knew there were no clouds in the sky. "The siege is nearly over," he said. "Maybe no one will survive. We have to hurry."

Jordan had ordered Ka to transfer its visual sensorium to him. The little Wind was high over the walls now, fluttering doggedly in the direction of the keep. Jordan held tightly to Tamsin's hand, trying to remember that he was really still sitting on the sand, and not suspended impossibly high in the air.

He could make out all kinds of fascinating details if he looked closely—ladders being raised here, the whizzing thread of steam-cannon missiles wavering in the air. Sounds drifted up to him: hissing, shouts, sharp impacts, clash of steel. But to look closely was to invite vertigo; he preferred to keep his eyes fixed on the row of windows that was their goal.

He could hear Tamsin muttering above him. "I hope the swans kill you all," she said. "Every last one of you." The sound of her voice chilled him; it held rage and hate such as he'd never heard before. He almost let go of her hand, but she was his lifeline, and she still clutched his fingers tightly. Her rage was not directed at him.

He had made Ka look upward once, and instantly regretted it. The sky faded from blue at the horizon, to emerald, to purest gold at the zenith. Cupped in that roseate glow was a lowering spiral of fine, glowing threads. A sound was coming from those threads, a kind of song sung by inhuman tongues.

It took all his will power to remain seated here in the sand, while the swans fell at him. But Ka was only meters from the tower now. Jordan mentally urged him forward, and held his breath until the little Wind finally soared in through an open casement, and hovered inside the queen's chambers.

"Find her!" he commanded. Ka began to flit from room to room, and Jordan found himself swaying in sympathy as his visual field ducked and swooped from corridor to room and back.

He could see the duennas, and soldiers; people were weeping and running about. There was no sign of the queen. He couldn't make out what was going on until a single word leapt out of the tumult:

"Captured!"

Jordan opened his eyes in surprise. "What is it?" asked Tamsin.

"Something's happened. The queen's gone."

"Now what?"

"I must find Armiger." He closed his eyes again.

"Bind her wrists, Enneas." Lavin stepped back. "Your majesty, we are leaving now. You may walk, or we will drag you." They stood in the catacombs. Galas' eyes were dark pools in the light from Enneas' lantern.

The thief fumbled with the bindings. "Excuse me, majesty," he said. He seemed overawed. Lavin realized he had assumed Lavin would fail. The thought made him laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" demanded Galas. "Is my humiliation so comforting to you?"

All Lavin's joy shrivelled. "Galas— I... I would never laugh at you, nor hold you in contempt. You are my dearest ideal and the only woman I have ever loved. Your pride and anger will never let you admit the favor I've done for you, but listen—we have time as we walk back to discuss terms. Our terms, not the terms of Royalty versus Parliament."

"What do you mean? Ah, that hurts!"

"Sorry, your majesty."

"Lead on, Enneas." The thief walked ahead, lantern raised. Lavin picked up a second lantern, leaned close to Galas, and whispered, "I mean that I am, and always have been, your servant. Don't you understand the situation? I am the commander of the army that controls your nation, and I am your most loyal servant. This is the moment I have worked for ever since I took charge of the war against you. I am yours, my army is yours, all the resources of Parliament are at our command. All we need do is deceive them as to your capitulation while we rebuild the Royalist power base in secret. You will be queen again, Galas!"

She stopped. "Lavin, you amaze me."

"Thank you, your highness."

"Please raise your hands, general," said a voice behind them.

Armiger stepped into the glow of Lavin's lantern. He stood in a painful crouch, but his hands didn't waver as they pointed the alien weapon at Lavin.

The fluttering rage that he had so carefully kept at bay overcame Lavin. He drew his sword and leaped at Armiger with a cry.

Armiger fired—not at Lavin but over his head. The narrow passage rocked to the concussion, and the ceiling fell in on him.

Armiger rolled the larger rocks off Lavin, and checked his pulse. "He is alive," he said.

Galas stared at the fallen general, her old friend and betrayer. She didn't know what she felt now. Rage, yes, and resentment. Fear, perhaps, of a man so obsessed as this, and so clever in his obsession. She could almost believe in his plan to deceive Parliament. Almost—but would Lavin ever be content to let her free, if once he possessed her? At one time, perhaps, she would have held faith with him.

Megan untied Galas. Ahead of them, an old man stood patiently in the light of a lantern he had placed on the floor. "Come along," he said. "Or go back. Which is it to be?"

Armiger walked up to him. "We go forward," he said. "Will you help us?"

Enneas shrugged. "It seems to be my lot in life to shepherd the damned into the underworld. Thief, general or queen, what the hell difference should it make to me? Come along then."

Galas relit Lavin's lantern, which had fallen, and placed it near his outflung arm. Then, looking back only once, she followed the others into the darkness.

Jordan was puzzled. He had seen Armiger take down the other man with some kind of weapon. He knew the general was somewhere underground, heading away from the palace. It must be a tunnel of some kind—but where did it let out?

He left Armiger's perspective and returned to Ka. "Ka, leave the tower," he said. "Fly up, as high as you can." The little Wind obliged, spiralling out and up at a giddying rate. Soon the entire palace was laid out below Jordan, like an architect's model.

Familiar skills came to his aid now. He could see the different layers and periods of construction of the place; as at Castor's or the Boros manor, the history of the Summer Palace was written in its stones. Armiger kept his eyes on the task at hand, which was negotiating the narrow way, so Jordan had ample time to contemplate his surroundings. He saw the type of stone in the passage Armiger was walking through, and had judged its age in the glow of the lantern held by Armiger's guide. That style of construction was used in particular types of wall or embrasure... He stared down from Ka's height, looking for the structure he knew must be there.

"Jordan, we're out of time."

Opening his eyes, he looked up to see white branches, like frozen lightning, gently touching down at points in the nearby hills.

He felt the stirring of the Swans' attention. They had not spotted him yet; it seemed they were here for another reason. Beyond the pressure of their searching gazes, he something else as well—a deep murmuring from underground.

"Mediation," he said, "we need shelter from the swans. Disguise us, or create a diversion—something, anything!"

"Come on," said Tamsin. "We've got to hide!" She pointed to the palace, where forms like living flames were rising into the air.

"Just one minute more." He clenched his eyes shut, and reentered Ka's perspective. There had to be something...

There it was: a long, faint line in the sand, the crumbled remains of a causeway that extended all the way from the central buildings of the palace past its walls. And at its terminus in the desert...

"I've got it!" That knot of men and horses, surrounding a tumble of stones, must be the end of the tunnel. It only remained for Jordan to orient himself, open his eyes, and find the distant smudge of figures with his own vision. Then he was up and running.

He went back down the hillside, out of sight of the palace and the now

abandoned, smoking siege engines. An eery silence was descending as the Swans touched down in the valley. He couldn't see what was happening there, unless he went back into Ka's perspective. That might be too dangerous at this point. But for all he knew, the swans were killing everyone.

When he estimated they were near the causeway, Jordan jogged cautiously up the hillside again. The long causeway was visible below them. It ended well outside the tents of Lavin's encampment, in the tumble of ruins Jordan had seen from above.

"Look!"

Tamsin was pointing at the palace. Jordan was afraid to look. Reluctantly, he turned his head, expecting to see the Swans descending on them.

Something huge was rising out of the earth near the palace's main gate. It was as big as one of the towers, rounded, and colored in mottled rust and beige shades. The Swans were darting around it like flies. A low drone carried from that direction.

"Our distraction," said Jordan. "Mediation was listening after all!"

A troop of nervous soldiers crouched at the ruins. They were watching the living flames walk the palace walls, but duty or fear kept them at their posts around the entrance to the tunnel. One stood to challenge Jordan as he led the horses between the jumbled stones.

"Now what?" hissed Tamsin.

Jordan was still covered with dust from their walk across the desert. In the desert he had been able to create heat from the mecha in dust. Could he do something else with them now? The only way to find out was to try.

He commanded the mecha in the dust covering him to make light. Tamsin gasped as Jordan's body began to glow.

"Take me to the underground way," Jordan commanded the terrified sentry. "And don't challenge me again." The sentry fell back, stammering apologies. Tamsin stared at Jordan in wonder as they followed him into the camp.

Before they got to the tumbled stones, a brilliant flash lit the sky from horizon to horizon. Moments later a deep and sustained rolling thunder fell across the ruins. Looking back, Jordan saw a tall spire of smoke and flame where the subterranean Wind had been. The Swans were spiralling up and away from the rubble.

He felt the searchlight gazes of the Swans. They were looking for something now; he was pretty sure he knew what—or rather, whom. "We need to get underground," he told Tamsin. "And stay there for a while."

The soldiers around the tunnel entrance scrambled out of the way of the glowing boy and the girl leading their horses. Jordan motioned for a man to take the reins of the mounts, then walked into the dark niche that housed the tunnel mouth.

"I'd love to do this to the guys at home," Jordan said. His glow lit up the entire chamber, showing clearly the dark slot of the tunnel. The glow was fading slowly as the mecha lost power.

They waited, while the Swans passed to and fro overhead. The Winds of Insolation, as Mediation had called them, could not see through the stone. The mecha of the soil were loyal to Mediation, and although Jordan heard the hurricane voices of the Swans demanding to know where the abomination that was Jordan Mason had gone, nothing answered. At least for now, they were safe.

After a long while the sound of scraping and footsteps came from the slot, and one after another, weary soldiers popped out and blinked at the afternoon sunlight. Jordan's glow had faded, and the soldiers were apathetic and ignored him. After the last one, an old man with a lantern emerged. Jordan's heart was in his mouth. He knew what he was going to see next, but he could scarcely believe it. When a man stepped into the light whose face he had only seen in mirrors, Jordan found himself tongue-tied. He simply stood there, as Armiger helped Megan, then Galas, out of the tunnel. Galas was dressed in tattered finery, Armiger in splendid armor. They looked like creatures of legend.

Armiger waved some device in his hands at the assembled soldiers. "Begone," he said. Jordan knew the voice, and yet he didn't; he had never heard it save from within his own skull.

"You too," said Armiger to Jordan.

"I, I brought horses."

"Good. Now go."

"No. I, I've got information for you."

"For me? What are you talking about?"

"I'm Jordan Mason. I've been watching you for months. Ever since... you came at night and put something in my skull, mecha or something, and then the others came and changed it—I can see through your eyes, hear through your ears. I've been watching! I know it all."

"Wait, stop." Armiger held up a hand. He seemed to be having trouble with his eyes; he focussed on Jordan only with great difficulty. "You're one of my remotes. I thought I'd lost you."

"Yes, sir, I mean no. The woman who attacked you just now, Calandria May—she wanted to use your implants to track you down, only something happened, I was able to see everything you saw..."

"What is this?" Megan took Armiger's arm. "We have no time for this."

Armiger nodded, and turned away.

"Wait!" The three people Jordan had watched in waking dreams for weeks were walking away. This wasn't turning out at all the way he had expected.

Tamsin elbowed him. "Come on!"

He blushed, then cleared his throat. They were nearly at the entrance now.

This was too much. After everything he'd been through...

"Hey! Armiger, you're going to listen to me! I know why you came to Ventus. I know what you're after. You want the secret of the Winds. Well, guess what, I have it!"

That stopped them. Armiger turned, and Megan turned with him, scowling. The queen merely sat down on a tumbled stone, and stared.

Jordan bowed. "'That a stone should speak, as you speak.' I think you told Queen Galas once that that was our deepest wish. You craved permission to speak. Well, now it's my turn. You want to know what the Winds are after, and what their alliances are. With your permission, I will tell you."

Finally I will speak, and you will listen.