Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

17

KEIR HESITATED, THEN reached out to rap on the door. It was ornately carved, and like everything else in Aerie's new capital city, smelled of wood shavings and fresh paint.

"I said, just a minute!" Leal sounded frantic.

"What, you're not even decent yet?" He heard the assurance in his own voice; back in Brink, he would never have teased an adult like this. But that time was increasingly a blur.

"It's not that," she shouted. "I just can't--oh, hell." He heard her thumping, slightly ungraceful footsteps, and then the door flung open. "I don't know what to wear," she said in a defeated tone.

"May I?" She ducked aside and he entered the gigantic bedroom they'd given her. It was so new its ceiling was only half-painted, with scenes of some epic battle in recent Virgan history. Garish, he thought.

"I know how you feel," he said, spreading his arms to show off his dress uniform. "I was going to wear my clothes from Brink, but they don't fit me anymore."

At that she smiled and ran her eyes over his uniform, which emphasized his broad shoulders. Leal herself was in loose pants tied up with a drawstring, and a plain white shirt. Laid out on her gargantuan four-poster bed were six complete outfits, ranging from a golden gown (with, of course, ankle ties for freefall modesty) to a severe black pantsuit. Keir stood over them and rubbed his chin half-consciously. He'd had to start shaving lately, and the process had a reassuring familiarity to it; but he'd never been shaved by another man before, as he had this morning by the footman they'd assigned to him.

"I have to dress to impress," she said. "The question is, how?"

He pointed to the gown. "Too extreme. The rule here is, there'll always be a prettier woman in the room. But looks is all they have. You don't want to look pretty, you want to look important."

She scowled in annoyance. "When in my life am I going to get another chance to be pretty?"

He stepped up and took her hands. "When we've won, and the whole world comes to celebrate."

She just stood there, smiling up at him, until he stepped back and said, "Today, you're here to dominate, and frighten. Think Venera Fanning."

"But she always looks good!"

"The two goals are not incompatible." He looked at the outfits again. "Which of these would Venera choose?"

She bit her knuckle, concentrating. "Not ... any of them. But it's all they gave me!"

"May I suggest we mix and match." He tapped the suit. "Too severe. But the trousers work." Next to it was a black top with corresponding harem pants. "The pants here are too much. But the top is off-the-shoulder, and the contradictions will be quite impressive." He handed her the black top and suit pants, and she stepped behind the screen to haul them on.

"Well..." She stood in front of the mirror, obviously pleased. "But it's not quite there."

"Gotta put your hair back and tie it off. Did they give you hairpins?" She nodded to the dressing table. He came back with two large red wooden pins and, stepping behind her, began tugging her hair into shape.

"You've done this before," she said.

"Apparently," he said past the pins between his teeth.

He was peripherally aware that she was watching him in the mirror, her face serious now. "Keir," she said at last, "where is it going to stop?"

"What?"

"This ... transformation. These changes in you."

He paused. "I don't know. All I know is I feel better. More myself."

"And your memories? Are they coming back?"

"Y-yes. And no. I know that I did more than just de-index myself. That's a scry thing, it doesn't affect your biological memories. Since I got here, I haven't had scry to lean on, so I've had to access that natural memory system just to function. So I'm getting better at it. But ... some things are just gone."

"Sita?"

He shook his head. "I remember her better every day. No. It's a period when I was in Brink. Something happened. I think I ... found out something. And it scared me, or something. So much that I wiped it from scry and my natural memory, and de-indexed and neotenized myself. It was a kind of suicide, really."

He'd said this dispassionately, but his hands were shaking a little as he finished adjusting Leal's hair. "There," he said, moving his hands to her shoulders. "Done."

"Yes." She was nodding. "I like it." The overall look was severe, but the top bared her shoulders and a plunge of skin between her breasts. Her hair was tightly drawn back, the two pins making a red X behind her head.

"Does it make you feel confident? Sharpen your eyebrows, and we're ready." He turned to the door, but didn't make it a meter before she'd grabbed his arm and hauled him back. She kissed him strongly, and his whole act of competence fell apart.

When they disengaged, he wobbled back a bit and she arched an eyebrow. "Yeah, it seems to work," she said.

"Let's go."

* * *

THE SPIN-GALE OF the city of Aurora whispered in the corners as Keir and Leal made their through the Slipstream ambassadorial mission. The building was marble, conspicuously made of stone in a city that was otherwise metal-poor. They heard adding machines and typewriters clattering in the side offices, and pageboys and -girls raced past carrying envelopes of various sizes.

An honor guard was waiting patiently by the bridge to the presidential palace. The red-and-gold-suited soldiers all saluted as they strolled up, and Keir grinned at Leal. She looked decidedly uncomfortable at the attention. "We're not even going outside," she whispered to him as they set out across the columned, covered bridge.

"Oh, just enjoy it." He was determined to wipe away the memories that had assailed him this morning, and made a point of looking out at the city as they walked. There was little to see, though; the way was obscured by thick forest.

The bridge connected to Aerie's new presidential palace, which was a fantasy in wrought iron, asteroidal pallasite, and glass. Beams of sunlight wheeled with majestic stateliness through corridors with polished floors and high arched ceilings. Workers were still buffing and painting here, too.

"Atten-shun!" The honor guard stopped as one, and saluted. Another group was approaching from the left, this second knot of Slipstream soldiers surrounding Admiral Chaison Fanning and Lacerta, the Home Guard officer who'd been stranded in Aethyr with Hayden Griffin. Despite their fresh dress uniforms, both appeared grim and tired.

"Any word on Venera?" Keir murmured to Leal, who shook her head. "Good morning, Admiral."

Fanning nodded impassively. The two groups merged and began to make their way to the front of the palace. Officials and support staff were everywhere now, scurrying to and fro, pushing tables, consulting over clipboards. It was some sort of organized chaos, and all done without scry. Keir was impressed.

Antaea Argyre waited alone at an intersection where white sunlight flooded in from the right. She wasn't the warrior today but the author, in a brocade jacket over a white blouse, dark knee-length trousers, and flats. There were no weapons belted at her hips.

She bowed, and the honor guard accepted her inside of it. She glanced up at Fanning, but no one spoke as they traversed the short sunlit hall to stand at the top of a broad, balconied level from which a vast, wide sweep of stairs led down to gardens.

Here, the front half of the palace became a single chamber walled by glass and supported by vaulting girders of iron. This part of the building was shaped somewhat like the inverted front of a ship, and the steps before them faced the prow. Sunlight poured in through the glass as if it wasn't there, flooding the trees and flower beds below. Outside, the forested city curved up on either side, and ahead rose and rose, to arch finally overhead in turquoise glory, its sweeping shape framed by two godlike wings of cloud.

One figure stood silhouetted at the top of the steps. Hayden Griffin was looking out over the new city, in the light of the sun he had built. There were plenty of other people traversing the steps, but all gave him a wide berth. Some paused behind him, to look back at him in awe.

His return from Aethyr had caused a frenzy of adulation in Aerie. They'd practically rioted in the streets, and even now, people were perched on buildings and in trees outside the palace, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. He'd responded to all of this with acute embarrassment, and had been hiding in his room.

The honor guard had hesitated at the sight of him. Keir smiled and walked through them, coming to stand by Griffin's side. "They say the whole city is made of trees," he commented.

Griffin stood with his arms crossed. Now he grinned at Keir. "Nothing like what your people could build, I'm sure," he said.

Keir barked a laugh. "None of my people would have the imagination for something like this." New as it was, Aerie had few hard resources, so the single vast wheel of Aurora had been grown rather than built. Young trees and whole groves of ancient ones had been towed here from across the world, and twined and tied, lashed and spiked together around a supporting skeleton of cable and iron beam to make a single, ring-shaped forest. Speed ivy from the ruins of Spyre had been seeded all about its outsides, and then slowly, over many months, it had all been spun up. The meandering plank streets still creaked and groaned as weight and tension adjusted beneath them; but the forest was dotted now with houses and hotels and shops. Many little lakes and ponds, spheres of water ranging from house- to block-sized, turned magisterially in the empty space within the ring. They threw rainbow refractions across the marble, a constant slow sweep of light like the passage of angels' wings.

A rustle of sound reached them from the throng of people that had spread in tendrils and knots through the gardens below. At the far end of the space was a broad square paved in glittering pallasite, and attendants were just in the process of clearing away the breakfast tables they had placed there. Others were making final adjustments to the placement of row after row of chairs for the delegates attending this, the colloquy's opening ceremony.

Someone appeared at Keir's shoulder; it was Leal. Her fingers found his hand. On the other side of Griffin, the admiral stepped up, the Guardsman next to him. On the end, still glancing up at Fanning, came Antaea Argyre.

The honor guard had retreated. They were alone at the top of the stairs.

Keir snuck a look at Chaison Fanning, too. His face was impassive, but Keir knew that the absence of his wife must be eating at his heart, especially on this of all days.

"Eyes forward," said Fanning. "We've all sacrificed for this moment, let's do it proud."

They walked together down the steps, under the gaze of a hundred nations.

* * *

CRICK, CRICK, CRICK. Leal was half-consciously twisting the pages of her speech, and she knew it was making a little noise, but she couldn't stop. Her mouth was dry and her knees felt weak, and if she could have turned and run from this stage, she would have.

The last of the delegates had just taken their seats. These were not people used to sitting in an audience; they had all been informed that there was no order to the seating--it was first come, first served. Some potentates of richer principalities looked indignant at ending up in the back.

The admiral stood with his hands behind his back, glaring them all into silence. He'd somehow draped himself with invisible Presence, and shortly, all eyes were on him.

He ignored the podium with its conical bullhorn, but instead walked to the edge of the stage.

"Thank you all for coming. And thanks to the government and people of Aerie for providing us with this glorious space in which to discuss the future of Virga." He ran through some more verbal salves, but was mercifully brief. His whole demeanor was that of a military commander at a briefing, and Leal supposed that was quite deliberate.

"The plan was to have my wife address the opening ceremonies," said Fanning--and suddenly Leal forgot her anxiety as he continued, "but she has gone missing somewhere in the airs of Virga."

There was a moment of shocked silence--not because those in the audience hadn't been hearing this rumor, but that this upstart admiral should admit it right now, right here. Fanning certainly had their undivided attention.

"Whether she is merely delayed or whether something has ... happened to her," Fanning continued, "I want to make it plain that it changes nothing. Our goals for this conference remain the same as they were described in the briefs you all received before coming here. I will not use this venue to advance a personal agenda of rescue or revenge. However," he added as muttering broke out among the delegates, "in the interests of trust, I am prepared to step down as chair of these proceedings, if the consensus among you is that my objectivity has been compromised."

The delegate from Tracoune stood up. "Is it true about the hostages?" The muttering became a boil of conversation.

Fanning held up his hand. "We'll get to that shortly," he promised. "But I must insist on a vote on this matter. We can't proceed if you don't trust me to perform my duties dispassionately."

"Dispassionately?" One of a small group in drab gray suits had stood up. "You ambushed and destroyed the People's Fleet of Falcon Formation while it was on maneuvers! Without provocation!"

"You paid Mavery to stage a provocative raid on Slipstream in order to draw away their fleet!" roared a prince of Eidon. "Maneuvers? Your fleet was loaded with soldiers! I know, because half their bodies floated into our airspace afterwards, and you were too embarrassed to repatriate them. We had to pay to incinerate them in Candesce ourselves!"

"And when the Gretels invaded Falcon, he defended one of your cities, even after you'd held him in prison for a hundred days!" This from the premier of Malagan himself.

The few delegates of the ancient principalities of Candesce who'd bothered to come to the colloquy looked entertained. The promise of such provincial political theater was probably exactly why they'd showed up.

The whole Falcon Formation delegation stood up and prepared to walk out.

"Please," said Fanning, but they were no longer listening.

Leal watched in horror as the audience began standing up, shouting at one another, heading for the paths, or just shaking their heads. Beside her, Antaea sat with her head in her hands, and even Keir, so normally unflappable these days, was sitting there with his mouth open.

Admiral Fanning's aura of command had evaporated. He stood there, shoulders slumped, a man lacking the one person in the world he needed to lean on.

Leal caught herself thinking that if she'd been here, Venera Fanning would have straightened this lot out in no time. What would she have done?

Leal could picture it with perfect clarity.

The pages of her speech slipped to the floor. As if from outside, she saw herself standing, walking to the leader of the ceremonial guardsmen at the side of the podium. "Give me your sidearm," she demanded, holding out her hand, palm up.

He goggled at her. "I'm not going to hurt anyone," she said. "Do it!"

She gave him the stare she'd learned worked best on undergrads. He glanced at the chaos in the audience, and a little smile appeared on his lips. "Do your best, ma'am," he said as he handed it to her.

Leal stalked up to the podium, her eyes on the pistol as she worked out how to turn off its safety. She heard a sudden commotion behind her as the others on the stage saw what she was holding, but it was too late as she raised the pistol high over her head and pulled the trigger.

Venera would have stood there after, with the gun smoking in her hand; so Leal did that. She glared out at the suddenly silent diplomats, military leaders, and heads of state, and then she put her mouth to the bullhorn affixed to the podium, and said, "My name is Leal Hieronyma Maspeth, and I have just returned from the universe beyond Virga with a message for you. A message and a warning, that you need to hear, because your very lives depend upon it.

"Now if you would all be seated, I would like to begin."