Queen of Candesce

For her, what was ending here was the luxury of being able to hide within herself. If she was to survive, she would have to begin to take other people’s emotions seriously. Lacking power, she must accommodate.

Glancing affectionately at Garth, who was talking intensely with his red-uniformed daughter, Venera had to admit that the prospect wasn’t so frightening as it used to be.

It became harder to walk as gravity began to vary between nearly nothing and something crushingly more than one g. Her horse balked, and Venera had to dismount; and when he ran off, she shrugged and fell into step next to Bryce and Sarto who were arguing politics to distract themselves. They paused to smile at her, then continued. Slowly, with many pauses and some panicked milling about as gaps appeared in the land ahead, they made their way to Fin.

They were nearly there when Buridan finally consigned itself to the air. The shouting and pointing made Venera lift her eyes from the splitting soil, and she was in time to see the black tower fold its spiderweb of girders around itself like a man spi

She looked at Bryce. He shrugged. “They knew it might happen. I told them to scatter all the copies of the book and currency to the winds if they fell. They’re to seed the skies of Virga with democracy. I hope that’s a good enough task to keep them sane for the next few minutes, and then, maybe, they’ll be able to see to their own safety.”

The tower would quickly disintegrate as it arrowed through the skies. Its pieces would become missiles that might do vast harm to the houses and farms of the neighboring principalities; so much more so would be the larger shreds of Spyre itself when it all finally went. That was tragic, but the new citizens of Buridan, and the men and women of Bryce’s organization, would soon find themselves gliding through a warm blue sky. They might kick their way from stone to tumbling stone and so make their way out of the wreckage. And then they would be like everyone else in the world: sunlit and free in an endless sky.

Venera smiled. Ahead she saw the doors of the low bunker that led to Fin, and broke into a run. “We’re there!”

Her logic had been simple. Fin was a wing, aerodynamic like nothing else in Spyre. Of all the parts that might come loose and fall in the next little while, it was bound to travel fastest and farthest. So, it would almost certainly outrun the rest of the wreckage. And Venera had a hunch that Fin’s inhabitants had given thought, over the centuries, about what they would do when Spyre died.

She was right. Although the guards at the door were initially reluctant to let in the mob, Cori

“But do you have boats? Bikes? Any means of traveling once we’re in the air?” Cori

Spyre’s final death agony began as the last were stumbling inside. Venera stood with Cori

A trembling shockwave raced around the curve of the world. It was beautiful in the blued distance but Venera knew it was headed straight for her. She should go inside before it arrived. She didn’t move.

Other splits appeared in the peeling halves of the world, and now the land simply shredded like paper. A roar like the howl of a furious god was approaching, and a tremble went through the ground as gravity failed for good.

Just before Bryce grabbed her wrist and hauled her inside, Venera saw a herd of Dali horses gallop with grace and courage off the rim of the world.

They would survive, she was sure. Kicking and neighing, they would sail through the skies of Virga until they landed in the lap of someone unsuspecting. Gravity would be found for them, somewhere; they were too mythic and beautiful to be left to die.

Cori

Nobody spoke as she drifted inside. Hollow-eyed men and women glanced at one another, all crowded together in the thin antechamber of the tiny nation. They were all refugees now; it was clear from their faces that they expected some terrible fate to befall them, perhaps within the next few minutes. None could imagine what that might be, of course, and seeing that confusion, Venera didn’t know whether to laugh or cry for them.

“Relax,” she said to a weeping woman. “This is a time to hope, not to despair. You’ll like where we’re going.”

Silence. Then somebody said, “And where is that?”

Somebody else said, “Home.”

Venera looked over, puzzled. The voice hadn’t been familiar, but the accent…

A man was looking back at her steadily. He held one of Fin’s metal stanchions with one hand but otherwise looked quite comfortable in freefall. She did recognize the rags he was wearing, though—they marked him as one of the prisoners she had liberated from the Gray Infirmary.

“You’re not from here,” she said.

He gri

A shock went through her. “What?”

“I only saw you from a distance when they rescued us,” said the man. “And then lost sight of you when we got here to Fin. Everyone was talking about the mysterious lady of Buridan. But now I see you up close, I know you.”

“Your accent,” she said. “It’s Slipstream.”

He nodded. “I was part of the expedition, ma’am—aboard the Arrest. I was there for the big battle, when we defeated Falcon Formation. When your husband defeated them. I saw him plunge the Rook into the enemy’s dreadnought like a knife into another man’s heart. Had time to watch the bastard blow up, before they netted me out of the air and threw me into prison.” He grimaced in anger.

Venera’s heart was in her throat. “You saw… Chaison die?”

“Die?” The ex-airman looked at her incredulously. “Die? He’s not dead. I spent two weeks in the same cell with him before Falcon traded me to Sacrus like a sack of grain.”

Venera’s vision grayed and she would have fallen over had she been under gravity. Oblivious, the other continued: “I might’a wished he were dead a couple times over those weeks. It’s hard sharing your space with another man, particularly one you’ve respected. You come to see all his faults.”

Venera recovered enough to croak, “Yes, I know how he can be.” Then she turned away to hide her tears.

The giant metal wing shuddered as it knifed through the air. Past the opened doorway, where Bryce and Sarto were silhouetted, the sky seemed to be boiling. Cloud and air were being torn by the shattering of a world. The sound of it finally caught up with Fin, a cacophony like a belfry being blown up that went on and on. It was a knell that should warn the principalities in time for them to mount some sort of emergency response. Nothing could be done, though, if square miles of metal skin were to plow into a town-wheel somewhere.