Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga Read online

  Keir had sat down here because it was a private spot and the view was pretty (he had no comparable view from his guest apartment). As he watched the festivities, however, he caught himself musing that Slipstream's government had somehow managed to turn the return of freedom to an unjustly conquered vassal state into some sort of national triumph. The thought was intrusive--alien--and somehow disturbing. He shifted uncomfortably, as if his own body was a puppet, and he'd suddenly felt someone else tug on the strings. That thought about the cunning of Slipstream's government ... it was as if somebody else had thought it, using his own brain to do so.

  He buried his face in his knees for a moment. It must be some effect of the de-indexing, or just shock from losing his dragonflies and his scry. Ever since he'd entered Virga he'd been having these strange flashes--thoughts that were somehow louder than his own thoughts; memories that felt like his but could not be. For instance, these skies felt familiar, as if he'd been in Virga before.

  Maybe he had been.

  It was hard to remember things without the help of scry, but he clearly recalled Maerta, at the door to Virga, telling him that he'd de-indexed himself. The term had a familiar ring to it, and normally he would simply query scry and the answer would pop into his head, as naturally as if it were his own thought. Scry was gone; so what did his primitive biological memory tell him about de-indexing?

  He was racking his mind for clues when he heard voices. Cautiously, he drew himself farther into the window well. The sounds came from down the short flight of stairs that led off the attic; it was Chaison and Venera Fanning speaking.

  He: "With all the excitement today I neglected to sign the papers commissioning some new officers. It's important for them, so I'm just going to walk up to the office and do it."

  She: "All right, dear. I need to brief my agents on their new assignments, so I'll be in the lounge if you need me."

  He: "Bye!"

  She: "Bye."

  There was a very long pause, during which Keir's thoughts drifted. The clouds outside reminded him of other sunset skies, mauve and pale green, of streaked clouds and a band of orange spanning half the horizon ... some planet's dusk sometime.

  What was there, locked in his mind?

  Quiet footsteps padded up the stairs, paused at the top, then moved down the hall. Keir peeked around the curtain and saw that it was Chaison Fanning, in his dress uniform, skulking.

  Fanning paused at one of the doors, raised his hand, hesitated, then cursed under his breath and knocked. In the pause that followed he put his hands behind his back and leaned back to glance up and down the hallway. Keir ducked back and so did not see who answered the door, but he heard her gasp, and it was Antaea Argyre's voice.

  The door thudded softly shut. Keir frowned out the window, but the frown kept twitching into a smile. His feelings hovered between embarrassment and an alien--but very dry--feeling of amusement. He thought about what would happen if Venera Fanning were to come up here now, and found that alien mind intruding again. This time, it clearly held one idea:

  This is not a good place to be right now.

  At the far end of the hallway, a small set of steps led up to another door; he'd presumed when he saw it earlier that it led to the roof. Keir unwound himself from the window well and moved to it. As quietly as he could, he tried the latch. It opened.

  Warm night air coiled around him; to his surprise, as he stepped onto the roof, he found himself among trees and flower beds. Though Slipstream's admiralty wheel was a pretty utilitarian place, the Fannings had managed to find space for a garden between two sloping roofs. Keir was grateful now for the night air and relative silence, and the feel of a warm breeze on his face.

  The garden was lit by window and city light--the sky was a glittering tapestry of pinpricks and glowing squares. The air felt wonderful, so like that of a planet ... were it not for the subtle tug in his inner ear that told him he was slowly turning over and over with the whole admiralty wheel. He strolled through the garden, letting his fingers trail through the fronds of living things. He closed his eyes, and flashes of imagery came to him of things he could not remember ever having remembered: plains and forests; sun on his face; and the water of lakes and streams swirling around his ankles, his waist ...

  "Stop." He opened his eyes and saw that he'd strayed close to the edge of the roof. City lights and dove-gray scraps of cloud raced by below him.

  He turned to find Leal Maspeth looking up at him. She was sitting on a verdigrisy copper box that jutted up out of the carefully tended flowers. She frowned at him. "It looked like you were about to walk off the roof."

  "Maybe I was, Ms. Maspeth," he said ruefully. "I don't have a very good sense of where I am--without my dragonflies, you know..."

  "Call me Leal."

  "Leal ... I was just enjoying the feel of grass."

  "Yes, you're from beyond the world," she said. "I guess you wouldn't have touched grass before."

  Surprised, he laughed. "Of course we have grass. On planets..." He paused, troubled, then said, "But we make worlds, little ones, you know, and spin them for gravity. Ten kilometers across, a hundred ... lots of room for trees and forests."

  She smiled. "Of course."

  There was a quiet pause. He looked around for someplace to sit, but Maspeth had the only available perch. Noticing what he was doing, she bumped over a bit and patted the surface next to her. "There's room."

  Keir flushed, hoping she couldn't tell in the darkness. Sure he'd hesitated too long, he sat down and found the only way to stay on the box was to be thigh-to-thigh with her. She didn't seem to notice their hips touching, but leaned back, putting her hands behind her. He turned so he could continue to see her, and found her invitingly close.

  She'd seemed old when he'd first met her, but maybe what he'd been seeing had been the weight of responsibility burdening her at the time. She was definitely older than he--maybe by ten years--but at dinner he'd caught himself exchanging glances with her that, at times, had the feel of youthful conspiracy to them.

  Pinioned by her frank gaze--and acutely feeling the lack of helpful suggestions from his scry--he struggled for something clever to say. Finally he noticed that she was holding a thick, old-fashioned book made of the flat leaves they called "pages." A quill pen jutted out of it. "What's that?" he blurted.

  She waggled the heavy volume. "A navigator's log book. I'm writing down my story, at last! I wasn't sure I would ever get to."

  She sat up and he took it from her gingerly. The thing was floppier than he'd expected, and he nearly dropped it. The pages were all blank, except for the first few that were covered with fine, looping handwriting in black ink.

  Keir had seen such things in sims and other virtual entertainments, but he'd never held an actual book in his hand, nor traced actual handwriting with his fingers. He did so now and found that his touch was reverent. This object had awoken some deep feeling inside him, a surprising respect.

  "You learned all you know," he said, "from these."

  "Oh, don't put it that way!" She laughed. "I'm already intimidated enough at the thought of writing my own."

  He returned it, and smiled at the glittering night. "You must be glad to be back."

  "Well." Now she frowned. "I'm not exactly 'back.' This place isn't my home."

  "But it's Virga."

  "If I threw you to some star across the universe, could you say you felt at home because it wasn't Virga?"

  "No, but--" He saw her point, but continued, anyway. "If Artificial Nature was there, it would feel much the same as anywhere else I've lived."

  "Why? Is it really all the same everywhere?"

  He shrugged. "Seems so ... The admiral wants me to go back. Says I should 'liaise' with the Renaissance when they pick up the rest of your men."

  "Oh, that's good. So are you happy to be going home?"

  "I told him no." Her eyes widened, but she said nothing. At this moment his lack of scry was a powerful ache, because he real
ly didn't know how much or how little to tell her. "I can't go back," he heard himself say. "Something was happening to me there--something awful ... I, I don't feel right, like this isn't my skin..." He pulled at the flesh of his forearm. "I think I lost my memory, but I seem to think I was once older..."

  She looked startled. "Older?" she asked. There was surprise in her voice, but concern as well, and he relaxed a bit. "Was it during what we call the outage?"

  "No, we came here after that." He realized he shouldn't have said that, but it was too late.

  "That's not very long ago." She leaned back again, her lips pursed and brow furrowed. "You've only spent the last couple of years of your life in Aethyr. Which means you spent most of it somewhere else. Are you telling me you don't remember any of that?"

  "N-no ... the memories are there. They're just not in ... what do you call it? Chronological order. They're jumbled up, like those spy's photos Venera threw on the table." And there were far too many of them, too; but he didn't say that.

  "Keir--you said you were once older. How old do you think you really are?"

  He shook his head.

  "You look somewhere between sixteen and nineteen," she said. "When I met you I thought you were younger. You look like you've put on a year or two since then."

  "I was getting shorter!" He'd jumped to his feet and started to walk, but there was nowhere to walk to in this tiny garden. He paced to the stairwell, then back to the edge of the roof. "The day I met you, I'd proved it. I was getting shorter." He raised a shaking hand to wipe at his eyes. "What was that? What's going on?"

  "Did you tell the admiral about this?"

  Her voice was quiet and steady. He turned to find she was still seated, but leaning forward, book on knees, all her attention on him. Keir shook his head.

  "Did he insist you should go back?"

  "Y-yes. But I can't." He scowled at the pretty night. "I'll run away first."

  She stood up. "I'll speak to him. He wants me to go, too--to bring his diplomats to the emissary's people. I told him he didn't need me and that anyway I'd done my part. He insisted until I pointed out that if he lost me, he'd lose his only connection to them." She held up the book and grinned. "I said, better that I stay here and write down everything that happened, so at least there's a record. The emissary's perfectly capable of guiding its people to their home without me. So that's what's happening."

  Leal walked to his side and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You see, all things are possible."

  Keir took a deep breath, and let it out. He smiled at her. "Thanks." She nodded, half-smiling.

  "I'm still a stranger here, though." He looked down, past ledge and shingle, down the sheer walls of the admiralty to where on any world-bound building, grass or stone or soil would begin. There was only air, and soaring clouds half-lit by the city glow. "I can't even read your letters."

  "How lucky for you, then," said Leal, "that I'm a teacher currently lacking a student. I can teach you to read."

  "I don't want to be a burden."

  "Hmm." She tapped her chin with a fingertip. "Well, then, why don't you tell me everything you know about Artificial Nature? And the Renaissance? I'll add it to my book. You may know more than you think; and what you know could be more useful to us than you realize."

  The first rule of the Renaissance was to keep what they were doing secret. --Then again, he'd already given most of it away before they'd even left Aethyr.

  He smiled wryly. "It's a deal."

  12

  DAYS PASSED IN a flurry of dispatches, expeditions, and consultations. The prime minister took their case to his cabinet, and the decision was made--for now--to indulge Chaison Fanning, just in case it turned out that Leal's story was true. The very first order of business was to verify that, and so a small flotilla of ships made for the sunless countries the very next day, charged with finding Serenity, establishing a safe bridgehead at the door, and entering Brink. Maerta had promised Leal that she would try to rescue Hayden Griffin and the stranded Home Guard airmen from the plains of Aethyr. With luck, they would be able to return the Guardsmen to their people and win some allies there.

  In case the rescue didn't happen or the rescued Guardsmen were hostile, Chaison had a Plan B for contacting the Home Guard, and it involved sending Antaea Argyre on a journey to the principalities of Candesce.

  That expedition was arranged; meanwhile, Venera's spies went into overtime, tracking the movements of a small set of people who were nominally stateless refugees, but who certainly didn't act like them. The name Inshiri Ferance came up again and again; it began to seem like she had visited every sun in Virga--just, not Slipstream's.

  Chaison and Venera Fanning worked together almost without consultation (though that might go on under the covers at night, as some speculated), he organizing the logistics of a new diplomatic network, she calling in favors, sending out invitations, and frankly spying on everybody.

  Leal's message to the people of Virga had not yet been announced, but the ripples from its impact were already spreading.

  * * *

  "THE SIMPLE FACT is, you can't worry people into acting," Admiral Fanning had said at the crowded strategy session. Keir remembered him shrugging. "No matter how much truth you have on your side, and no matter how compelling your arguments, people simply won't move if they don't have to." He had taken a piece of chalk and drawn a white slash through the words "Artificial Nature" written on the chalkboard behind him. Next to it he'd written one of many curious new words Keir was learning lately. This one was "velleity."

  "That's our true enemy," he said. "Velleity means 'having a vague desire to do something, but not enough will to actually do it.' If we take our message of urgent action around to the nations of Virga, that's what we're going to get: a vague interest, some desultory waves of the hand, and no commitment.

  "So, our first tool will be outrage and excitement."

  Keir saw little of that today as he strolled the iron pavement of Rush, Slipstream's capital city. He did see a lot of rushing about in Quartet Two, Wheel One--but that was because the merchants were still making out like bandits from the Freedom Day tourists, many of whom had stayed to enjoy a rare heat wave cooked up by Slipstream's sun controllers. There were plenty of stalls in alley mouths, a few street performers on the odd corner, lots of traffic on foot and in man-powered jitneys, and many smiling faces. The headlines in the newspapers were in small type these days. In more than one sense, a new summer had settled on Slipstream.

  "There's the shop," Leal said. "You go on--I'll see you back at the palace."

  He grinned at her. "'Back at the palace.' I like that."

  They'd just been clothes-shopping, since he couldn't wear his Brink-made apparel without attracting attention, and the boy's clothing he'd borrowed from a mate on the Torn Page of Fate had apparently shrunk. That was today's excuse, anyway; Leal had been dragging him out into the streets every day since they'd arrived. He had to admit it was helping him gain his bearings.

  She sent him a luminous smile and turned away. He paused at the beveled-glass door to the bookstore and glanced back, in time to see her raise her face to a beam of hot sunlight from the nearby sun. Of course, Slipstream was as exotic to her as it was to him. He smiled and hauled on the heavy door.

  Doors that didn't open for you automatically; gaslight in the evenings; no screens, no scry--it was all bewildering and wonderful, but there was a kind of beauty to life here that he was starting to appreciate. Beauty like these books! He stood by the door, breathing in the scent of the paper for a moment and gazing around in wonder. The walls were lined with leather-bound folios, and most of the floor space was taken up with shelves. The amount of actual information here was infinitesimal--his scry implants could have carried a billion bookstores' worth--but that hardly mattered. Each book was a thing, the care and material going into making it announcing to the world that this knowledge or this story, however small, was a treasure. He flipped through a few
of them in delight as the bemused shopkeeper watched.

  "Anything I can help you with?"

  "Well, maybe." He let his accent shine through. The paper bag containing his clothing would help with this role, but Leal had told him severely, "No pretending. Be what you are: a foreigner." So he didn't hide his hesitation at finding a spot to put down the bag; and he looked around carefully to make sure they were alone before saying, "I hear there's a book I can't buy from you."

  The shopkeeper's open expression became veiled. "Don't know what you mean. We have a free press in Slipstream, since the Pilot's death."

  "Well, it's not officially banned, but I heard the admiral bought up the whole print run."

  "I really don't know--"

  "Oh, come on! Do I look like a spy?" --Which was the worst kind of thing to say if you really were a spy, of course, but he was going to obey Leal's instructions to the letter. "You're my last chance; I'm leaving for home tomorrow."

  The shopkeeper sighed heavily. "Listen, son, if a book's been banned--officially or not--do you really think you'd be likely to find a copy here?"

  "Well, exactly. So..."

  The man leaned over the counter. "Where's the last place you'd expect to be buying books?"

  "Oh, I don't know. The docks? The butcher's?"

  "There's a cheese shop two blocks spinward," said the shopkeeper innocently. "That's pretty much the last place I'd look."

  "Huh. Thanks, I'll bear that in mind." Keir left the shop, and five minutes later he walked out of the cheese shop with a brand-new copy of Antaea Argyre's controversial new autobiography. It was, of course, buried in the bag under his new clothing.