Queen of Candesce

“N-no…” Suspiciously, she reached to take his hand. He drew her to her feet and draped an arm across her shoulder.

“Quickly now,” he said as he drew her toward the stairs. “While everyone’s busy.”

“What—” She was having trouble finding words. “What are you doing?”

He stopped, reared back, and stared at her. “I’m taking you home.”

“Home? Whose home?”

“Yours, you silly woman. Liris.”

“But why are you helping me?”

Now he looked a

She paused at the top of the steps and looked around. The soldiers who had crowded the roof all seemed to be leaping off one side, in momentary silhouetted flashes showing an arm brandishing a blunderbuss, another waving a sword. There was fighting down in the bramble-choked lot that surrounded Liris. Farther out, she glimpsed squads of men ru

“Venera! Get off the roof!” She blinked and turned to follow Odess.

They descended several levels and Venera found herself entering, of all places, the apartments of the former botanist. The furniture and art that had borne the stamp of Margit of Sacrus was gone, and there were still burn marks on the walls and ceiling. Someone had moved in new couches and chairs, and one particularly charred wall was covered with a crepuscular tapestry depicting cherry trees shooting beams of light all over an idealized tableau of dryads and fairies.

Venera sat down under a dryad and looked around. Eilen was there, and the rest of the diplomatic corps. “Bring a blanket,” said Odess, “and a stiff drink. She’s in shock.” Eilen ran to fetch a comforter, and somebody else shoved a tumbler of amber liquid into Venera’s hand. She stared at it for a moment, then drank.

For a few minutes she listened without comprehension to their conversation; then, as if a switch had been thrown somewhere inside her, she realized where she must be and she understood something. She looked at Odess. “This is your new office,” she said.

They all stopped talking. Odess came to sit next to her. “That’s right,” he said. “The diplomatic corps has been exalted since you left.”

Eilen laughed. “We’re the new stars of Liris! Not that the cherry trees are any less important, but—”

“Moss understands that we need to open up to the outside world,” interrupted Odess. “It could never have happened under Margit.”

Venera half smiled. “I suppose I can take some credit for making that possible.”

“My dear lady!” Odess patted her hand. “The credit is all yours! Liris has come alive again because of you. You don’t think we would abandon you in your hour of need, do you?”

“You will always have a place here,” said Eilen.

Venera started to cry.

“We would never have told,” Odess said a few minutes later. “None of us.”

Venera grimaced. She stood at a mirror where she was dabbing at her eyes, trying to erase the evidence of tears. She didn’t know what had come over her. A momentary madness; at least it was only the Lirisians who had witnessed her little breakdown. “I suppose it was Sarto,” she said. “It hardly matters now. I can’t show my face up there without Guinevera putting a bullet in me.”

Odess hmmphed, wrapping his arms around his barrel chest and pacing. “Guinevera has impressed no one since he arrived. Why should any of your other allies listen to him?”

She turned, raising an eyebrow. “Because he’s the ruler of a council nation?”

Odess made a flicking motion. “Aside from that.”

With a shake of her head Venera returned to the divan. She could hear gunfire and shouting through the opened window, but it was filtered through the roar of the world-edge winds that tumbled above the courtyard shaft. You could almost ignore it.

In similar fashion, Venera could almost ignore the emotions overflowing her. She’d always survived through keeping a cool head, and this was no time to have that desert her. It was inconvenient that she felt so abandoned and lost. Inconvenient to feel so grateful for the simple company of her former coworkers. She needed to recover her poise, and then act in her own interests as she always had before.

There was a commotion in the corridor, then someone burst through the doors. He was covered in soot and dust, his hair a shock, the left arm of his jacket in tatters.

Venera leaped to her feet. “Garth!”

“There you are!” He rushed over and hugged her fiercely. “You’re alive!”

“I’m—oof! Fine. But what happened to you?”

He stepped back, keeping his hands on her arms. Garth had a crazed look in his eye she’d never seen before. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I was looking for you,” he said. “Outside. The rest of them, they’re all out there, fighting around the foot of the building. Sacrus has ringed us, they want something here very badly, and our relief force is trying to break through from the outside. So Anseratte and Thinblood are leading the Liris squads in an attempt to break out—make a corridor…”

Venera nodded. The irony was that this fight was almost certainly about her, but Anseratte and the others wouldn’t know it. Sacrus wanted the key, and they knew Venera was here. Naturally, they would throw whatever they had at Liris to get it.

If Guinevera had tossed her off the roof half an hour ago, the battle would already be over.

Garth toyed with the ripped fringe of his coat for a moment, then burst out with, “Venera, I am so, so sorry!”

“What?” She shook her head, uncomprehending. “Things aren’t so bad. Or do you mean…?” She thought of Bryce, who might be lying twisted and broken at the foot of the wall. “Oh,” she said, a twisting feeling ru

He had just opened his mouth—doubtless to tell her that Bryce was dead—when the noises outside changed. The gunfire, which had been muffled with distance and indirection, suddenly sounded loud and close. Shouts and screams rang through the open windows.

Venera ran over, and with Odess and Eilen craned her neck to look up the shaft of the courtyard. There were people on the roof.

She and Odess exchanged a look. “Are those our…?” she started to say, but the answer was clear.

“Sacrus is inside the walls!” The cry was taken up by the others and suddenly everyone was ru

Venera paused long enough to shrug at him, then grabbed his arm and hauled him after her into the corridor.

The whole population of Liris was ru

Garth stared at the crowd and shook his head. “We’ll never get through that.”

Venera eyed the window. “I have an idea.”

As she slung her leg over the lintel Garth poked his head out next to her and looked up. “It’s risky,” he said. “Somebody could just kick us off before we can get to our feet.”

“In this gravity, you’re looking at a sprained ankle. Come on.” She climbed rapidly, emerging into the light of flares and the sound of gunfire. Half the country was struggling with something at the far end of the roof. Venera blinked and squinted, and realized what it was: they were trying to dislodge a stout ladder that had been swung against the battlements. Even as that came clear to her, she saw the gray crosshatch of another emerge from the darkness to thud against the stonework.