Queen of Candesce

Selene reached up to take Margit’s arm, but the former botanist batted her hand aside. Stepping back, her face full of doubt, Selene looked around—and her eyes met Garth’s. He frowned and shook his head slowly.

Angrily, she turned away.

The twelve horses stepped over a barricade while their riders shot the men behind it. The horses were armored, Garth saw, although he was sure it wouldn’t prove too effective under direct fire. Sacrus’s men weren’t firing, though. They were too amazed at what they were seeing. The beasts towered over them, huge masses of muscle on impossibly long legs, festooned with sheet metal barding that half hid their giant eyes and broad teeth. The monsters were overtop and past and wheeling before the defenders could organize. And by then bullets and flicking hooves were finding them, and they all fell.

Margit stood there and watched while the commanders on the ground shouted and waved. The other men on the rooftop stared at the fiasco unfolding below them, then looked to Margit. The seconds dragged.

In that time the horses reached a point midway between the bottled-up council leadership and the Sacrus force below no-man’s land. Now they split into two squads of six. Venera led hers in a thunderous charge directly at the men who had pi

Selene jumped onto the wall beside Margit. She stared for a second, then cursed and whirling, shouted, “Shoot! Shoot, you idiots! They’re going to—”

Margit seemed to wake out of her trance. She stepped grandly down from the wall and frowned at the line of prisoners that had been led onto the roof. She strolled over, loosening a pistol at her belt.

“Where is Venera Fa

A sick feeling came over Garth. He watched Margit walk up and down the line, saw her pause before Moss, sneer at Samson Odess, and finally stop in front of Eilen.

“You were her friend,” she said. “You’ll know where she is.” She raised the pistol and aimed it between Eilen’s eyes.

Garth tried to run over to her, but a soldier kicked his legs out from under him and only the light gravity saved him from breaking his nose as he fell. “She’s right there!” Garth hollered at Margit. “Riding a horse! You were just looking at her.”

Margit glanced back. Her eyes found Garth lying prone on the flagstones.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said with a smile. “Those things weren’t real.”

She shot Eilen in the head.

Venera’s friend flopped to the rooftop in a tumble of limbs. The other captives screamed and quailed. “Where is she?” shrieked Margit, waving the pistol. Now, too late, Selene was ru

As she led Margit away Selene glanced over at Garth. It was his turn to look away.

There was a lot of ru

Someone hauled him to his feet. Dimly he realized that a great roaring sound was coming from beyond the roof’s edge. Now the men on the roof did start firing—and cursing, and looking at one another helplessly.

Garth knew exactly what had happened. Venera had broken the line around Guinevera’s men. They were pouring out of their defensive position and attacking Sacrus’s force beneath no-man’s land. That group was now itself isolated and surrounded.

He wouldn’t be surprised if Venera herself had moved on, perhaps circling the building to co

“Come on.” Garth was hauled to his feet and pushed to the middle of the roof. He coughed and realized that smoke was pouring up from the courtyard. The prisoners were wailing and screaming.

Margit’s soldiers had set the cherry trees alight.

“Get on the platform or I’ll shoot you.” Garth blinked and saw that he was standing next to the elevator that climbed Liris’s cable. Margit and Selene were already on the platform, with a crowd of soldiers and several Liris prisoners including Moss and Odess.

He climbed aboard.

Margit smiled with supreme confidence. “This,” she said as if to no one in particular, “is where we’ll defeat her.”

Venera looked down from her saddle at Guinevera, who stared at her with his bloody sword half raised. “You spoke out of turn, Principe,” she called down. “Even if I wasn’t Buridan before, I am now.”

He ducked his head slightly, conceding the point. “We’re grateful, Fa

Venera finally let herself feel her triumph and relief, and slumped a bit in her saddle. Fragmentary memories of the past minutes came and went; who would have thought that the skin of Spyre would bounce under the gallop of a horse?

Scattered gunfire echoed around the corner of the building, but Sacrus’s army was in full retreat. Their force below no-man’s land had surrendered. No one had any stomach for fighting anyway; Sacrus and council soldiers stood side by side, exchanging uneasy glances as another long slow undulation moved through the ground. Council troops were swarming up the sides of Liris, but there was no sound from up there, and an ominous flag of smoke was fluttering from the roof line.

Seeing that, Venera’s anxiety about her friends returned. Garth, Eilen, and Moss—what had become of them during Sacrus’s brief occupation? Her eyes were drawn to the cable that stretched from Liris up to Lesser Spyre. It seemed oddly slack, and somehow that tiny detail filled her with more fear than anything else she’d seen today.

Closer at hand, she spotted Jacoby Sarto walking, unescorted, past ranks of huddling Sacrus prisoners. He looked up at her, his face eloquently expressing the unease she too felt.

Another undulation, stronger this time. She saw trees sway and a sharp crack! echoed from Liris’s masonry wall. Some of the soldiers cried out.

Guinevera looked around. Ever the dramatist, his florid lips quivered as he said, “This should have been our moment of triumph. But what have we won? What have we done to Spyre?”

Venera did her best to look unimpressed, though she was worried too. “Look, there’s no way to know,” she said. That was a lie: she could feel it, they all could. Something was wrong.

A captain ran up. He saluted them both, but it was almost an afterthought. “Ma’am,” he said to Venera. “It’s… they’re waiting for you. On the roof.”

A cold feeling came over her. For just a second she remembered lying on the marble floor of the Rush admiralty, bleeding from the mouth and sure she would die there alone. And then, curled around herself inside Candesce, feeling the Sun of Suns come to life, minutes to go before she was burnt alive. She’d almost lost it all. She could lose it all now.

She flipped down the little ladder attached to her saddle and climbed down. Her thighs and lower back spasmed with pain, but there was no echo from her jaw. She wouldn’t have cared if there had been. As a tremor ran through the earth, Jacoby Sarto reached to steady her. She looked him in the eye.

“If you come with me,” she said, “whose side will you be on?”

He shrugged and staggered as the ground lurched again. “I don’t think sides matter anymore,” he said.

“Then come.” They ran for the ladders.