Queen of Candesce

To relieve the Lirisian army, they would have to force a wedge under Liris, with the edge of the world at their right side. To do this they would trade off their ability to threaten Sacrus along the i

Venera examined the map. “We have to fool them into making the wrong choice,” she said.

“Yes, but how are we going to do that?” He shook his head. “Even if we did, they can maneuver just as fast as we can. They have less ground to cover than we do to redeploy their forces.”

“As to how we’ll fool the snake into uncoiling,” she said, “it helps to have your own snake to consult with.” She turned and waved to some figures standing a few yards away. Jacoby Sarto emerged from the shadows; he was a silhouette against Klieg lights that pinioned a pair of hulking locomotives in the center of the roundhouse. He was accompanied by two armed soldiers and a member of Bryce’s underground.

The commander bowed to Sarto, but then said, “I’m afraid we ca

“Lord Sarto has seen the light,” said Venera. “He has agreed to help us.”

“Pah!” The commander sneered. “Sacrus are masters of deception. How can we trust him?”

“The politics are complex,” she said. “But we have very good reasons to trust him. I do. That is why I brought him.”

There were more glances thrown between the colonels and the aides. The commander twitched a frown for just a moment, then said, “No—I understand the dilemma we’re in, but my sovereign and commanding officer is Principe Guinevera, and he’s in danger. Politically, saving our leadership has to be the priority. I’ll not countenance any plan that weakens our chance of doing that.”

Jacoby Sarto laughed. It was an ugly, contemptuous sound, delivered by a man who had spent decades using his voice to wither other men’s courage. The commander glared at him. “I fail to see the humor in any of this, Lord Sarto.”

“Forgivable,” said Sarto dryly, “as you’re not aware of Sacrus’s objectives. They want Liris, not your management. They haven’t crushed the soldiers pi

“What could they possibly want with Liris?”

“Me,” said Venera, “because they surely think I’m still there—and the elevator cable. They need to cut it. All they have to do is capture me or make it impossible for me to leave Greater Spyre. Then they’ve won. It will just be a matter of time.”

Now it was the commander’s turn to laugh. “I think you vastly overrate your own value, and underrate the potential of this army,” he said, sweeping his arm to indicate the paltry hundreds gathered in the cavernous shed. “You alone can’t hold this alliance together, Lady Thrace-Guiles. And I said it before, the elevator cables are of little strategic interest.”

Venera was furious. She wanted to tell him that she’d seen more men gathered at circuses in Rush than he had in his vaunted army. But, remembering how she had thrown a lighted lamp at Garth in anger and his gentle chiding after, she bit back on what she wanted to say, and instead said, “You’ll change your mind once you know the true strategic situation. Sacrus wants—” She stopped as Sarto touched her arm.

He was shaking his head. “This is not the right audience,” he said quietly.

“Um.” In an instant her understanding of the situation flipped around. When she had walked in here she had seen this knot of officers in one corner of the roundhouse and assumed that they were debating their plan of attack. But that wasn’t what they were doing at all. They had been huddling here, as far as possible from the men they must command. They weren’t pla

“Hmmm…” She quirked a transparently false smile at the commander. “If you men will excuse me for a few minutes?” He looked puzzled, then a

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

She stopped in an area of blank floor stained over the decades by engine oil and grease. At first Venera didn’t meet Sarto’s eyes. She was looking around at the towering wrought-iron pillars, the tessellated windows in the ceiling, the smoky beams of light that intersected on the black backs of the locomotives. A deep knot of some kind, loosened when she cried in Eilen’s arms, was unraveling.

“They talk about places as being our homes,” she mused. “It’s not the place, really, but the people.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said. His dry irony had no effect on Venera. She merely shrugged.

“You were right,” she said. He cocked his head to one side, crossing his arms, and waited. “After the confirmation, when you said I was still Sacrus’s,” she went on. “And in the council chamber, even when we talked in your cell earlier tonight. Even now. As long as I wanted to leave Spyre, I was theirs. As long as they’ve known what to dangle in front of me, there was nothing I could do but what they wanted me to do.”

“Haven’t I said that repeatedly?” He sounded a

“All along, there’s been a way to break their hold on me,” she said. “I just haven’t had the courage to do it.”

He grumbled, “I’d like to think I made the right choice by throwing in with you. Takes you long enough to come to a decision, though.”

Venera laughed. “All right. Let’s do this.” She started to walk toward the locomotives.

“There you are!” Venera stumbled, cursed, and then flung out her arms.

“Bryce!” He hugged her, but hesitantly—and she knew not to display too much enthusiasm herself. No one knew they were lovers; that knowledge would be one more piece of leverage against them. So she disengaged from him quickly and stepped back. “What happened? I saw the semaphore station blown up. We all assumed you were…”

He shook his head. In the second-hand light he did look a bit disheveled and soot stained. “A bunch of us got knocked off the roof, but none of us were hurt.” He laughed. “We landed in the brambles and then had to claw our way through with Sacrus’s boys firing at our arses all the way. Damn near got shot by our own side as well, before we convinced them who we were.”

Now she did hug him and damn the consequences. “Have you been able to contact any of our—your people?”

He nodded. “There’s a semaphore station on the roof. The whole Buridan network’s in contact. Do you have orders?”

As Venera realized what was possible, she gri

“And what are you going to do?” asked Bryce.

She smiled past the throbbing in her jaw. “What I do best,” she said. “I’ll set the ball rolling.”

Venera stalked over to the black, bedewed snout of a locomotive and pulled herself up to stand in front of its headlamp. She was drenched in light from it and the overhead spots, aware that her pale face and hands must be as bright as lantern flames against the dark metal surrounding her. She raised her arms.

“It is tüüüme!”

She screamed it with all her might, squeezed all the anger and the pain from her twisted family and poisonous intrigues of her youth, the indifferent bullet and her loss of her husband Chaison, the blood on her hands after she stabbed Aubri Mahallan, the smoke from her pistols as she shot men and women alike, all of it into that one word. As the echoes subsided everyone in the roundhouse came to their feet. All eyes were on her and that was exactly right, exactly how it should be.